Best Beauty Parlour

If you go down to Padi Pole in Mandvi, you'll find Best Beauty Parlour. The name sounds like a big deal, but we are just a small setup tucked away in the lane. Mandvi is always crowded and noisy, so inside here, it feels a bit quieter. My sisters and I handle most of the work. We started this because we liked doing hair and makeup for our cousins. Now, we have people from all over the area coming in. The floor is a bit uneven in one corner, but nobody really cares. We have a few mirrors and a couple of stools for people to sit. Sometimes, when the power goes out, we just open the windows and keep going. It gets quite hot, especially in the afternoons. We don't have a big fancy menu of services. You just come in, tell us what you need, and we do it. Whether it's a basic haircut or getting ready for a function, we just get on with it. We usually have the radio playing some old songs in the background. It helps pass the time when it's slow. On festival days, it's a bit of a madhouse. There are hair pins and cotton bits everywhere on the floor by the end of the day. We clean it up and start again the next morning. It’s a lot of standing around, but we are used to it by now. The tea lady from next door brings us chai twice a day.