This Book On Ayurvedic Beauty Has 60 Different Ingredients For That Natural Glow!

There’s a lot of information on the internet about, well, everything. And when it comes to beauty, everyone is dishing advice by the kilo, most of it useless and quite frankly cumbersome. If a face mask is going to require me to procure a rose’s sixth petal or a left-handed snail’s small toe, they’ve lost me. Because while I consume tremendous amounts of information on beauty, I am only willing to make that much effort for it before I abandon attempts in favour of something served ready-made in a bottle. And this is precisely why this book, Glow, took me by surprise.

Written by Vasudha Rai, who is clearly as smitten by all things beauty as I am, this one tells you how to do beauty right, without running after Western food fads or Eastern skincare wizardry. And honestly, I didn’t expect any less from Vasudha who has spent more than 15 years in the beauty industry, working as Beauty Director for the likes of Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Women’s Health. By her own admission, despite the number of years in the glamour space, her appetite for delicious skincare and sumptuous makeup hasn’t dimmed. She’s always been grounded and curious, reading up and experimenting. Probably what led to her writing this book.

Glow talks about all things – herbs, tonics, foods, rituals – that are Indian. It’s ancient wisdom, beautifully worded and broken down, so you don’t get overwhelmed. Often, when I was reading the words, I would think of the ingredients mentioned in ads as things that are good for you. Like kesar or tulsi; they sound sweet to the ears and like they serve up something exotic, but that’s precisely what doesn’t happen. Well, in her book, Vasudha dishes out valuable advice on these ingredients – each sectioned down into its application, benefits and what happens if you go overboard. This, she manages to do without making it feel like you’ll have to make a beeline for the forest to forage for these ingredients.

But Vasudha certainly isn’t offering you magic potions. She quite matter-of-factly states that you’ll need to invest time to achieve any real results. Her in-depth knowledge of how each ingredient works, what it affects and how, is insightful and eye-opening in some cases.

I particularly enjoyed the bits where she tell us juicy stories about ancient beauty rituals like how rose essential oil was discovered by Noor Jehan in India or how saffron is considered an antidepressant by the Chinese.

Mostly, I found that this book is like sitting with your grandmother, while she applies coconut oil to your hair, sharing tips and tricks to looking and staying beautiful, inside out. This one is definitely worth a read, and also worth a try.