Everyday Musings > Against your grace

I visited a MAC cosmetics store two years ago to purchase Strobe cream, something Anj recommended. Walked into the Mumbai In-orbit store and felt very intimidated, just as I had felt in their Bangalore outlet. As a make-up novice, it was comforting to know exactly what I wanted. The products were great, the staff was courteous, but professional to the point of seeming cold. I was stumped. Why would a cosmetics brand train itself to be so?

I read up on the origins of MAC. Founded in 1984 in Toronto by Frank Toskan and Frank Angelo, MAC was specifically designed for professional make-up artists. It was only much later that they started retailing on the high street and Estee Lauder took over the brand in 1994. That gave me an inkling of why they might have felt so cold – they started as a brand that sold to professionals, akin to a b2b business. When they turned to consumers, perhaps their demeanour remained the same. Even their store design seemed more like a professional's make up box rather than a boudoir. They were professional, even to the novices.

Brands possess inherent qualities which impart a grace peculiar to each one of them. The same is true of characters in sitcoms, books, films and just as true for us Human Beings. As years go by, some of us enhance the grace within us and some of us misplace it within layers of conditioned behaviour. Going against our grace produces a dissonance that doesn’t seem right, to the viewer as well as the character involved. When we speak of actors in plays or sitcoms or movies and marvel how they never let their character slip, we are speaking of them staying within their grace. Like the cast of Friends - their reactions always seem so true to their characters, in good situations and bad. The writers of the show have channelled a consistency makes them so predictable and thus relatable to us, as old friends. Saas-Bahu serials often lose the plot when they make characters do things that are against their grace and viewers lose interest or faith in the story.

To be successful in the long run is perhaps a measure of how well one has managed to not go against one’s grace and stay in character till the curtains go down. As with acting, it is a matter of living the role, of understanding the motivation and inherent qualities that define our character. Once that is figured, it’s a matter of sticking to our natural tendency and relating to everything from that perspective.

Grace is a gift only we can take away from ourselves. Whether we do so willingly or unwittingly, it shapes who we are and who we choose not to be. A block of wood when planed in the wrong direction will tear rather than form a smooth surface, a thing aptly captured in the saying - going against the grain. Or should I say grace.