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"  Here I am, my first day in India, kneeling in this sanctum, head bowed, heart heavy, my mind spinning a roulette wheel of Life Questions, the black ball a whirling blur, finally dropping on this whopper: Of all the world&amp;#039;s religions, certain that their beliefs are right and true and shall come to pass, which one has bet on the correct answer? Christians, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Rastafarians, Scientologists, Mennonites, Bieberites\u2014who will win the religion lotto? What is the jackpot? And how will those who played on a misguided team pay for their sins? The last question is of particular concern to me, as I&amp;#039;m famous for my bad judgment. I&amp;#039;ve never won anything but a Toto album in a seventh-grade dance contest, and I have an aversion to fire, not to mention brimstone (aka sulfur), which when burned at high temperatures smells like something you&amp;#039;d blame on the family dog. My knees are getting sore. I came to Mumbai not seeking answers to these questions, but in search of Mickey Contractor\u2014the Max Factor of Bollywood makeup artists, who has creative talent and beauty tips an inside trader would kill for. But my quest will have to wait until I&amp;#039;m done praying to the porcelain god in my bathroom, where, despite following the orders of my internist, Joseph Mulvehill, MD (&amp;quot;Drink only bottled water and break the seal yourself, no iced anything, no garnishes, no street food, no toothbrush under the tap&amp;quot;), I&amp;#039;m throwing up more than prayers, and suffering what locals politely refer to as &amp;quot;a running stomach.&amp;quot; Take a tip from me: No singing in the shower.  Popping the Ciprofloxacin that Mulvehill prescribed in case of this emergency, I&amp;#039;m up and running, in a good way, dressing and tressing and stressing about where in this city to look for Mickey first. Mumbai, the star of Slumdog Millionaire, is a city of extreme extremes\u2014equal parts jasmine and sewage; temples and traffic; boutiques and bazaars; vulgar wealth and abject poverty. Yet so many faces are smiling, even street beggars, because the overriding belief in this country is: If not in this life, then the next. The colliding classes and sensory overloads inspire Bollywood&amp;#039;s over-the-top musicals and films, around 800 of which are produced every year. Mumbai is one big cast of characters where, just like in the movies, anything can happen.  Cue music. A knock on the door! A beautiful, mysterious Indian woman, plump in a purple sari and wearing Gandhi glasses and a long black ponytail streaked with gray, says, with a gap-toothed smile, &amp;quot;My name is Haresha. Twelve years I am doing Mehndi. You called for the Mehndi?&amp;quot; She holds up a briefcase. The music stops.  &amp;quot;Yes or no?&amp;quot; I wait for a clue. But Haresha just nods in that bobble-headed way that looks like yes and no at the same time. Uh, yes?  &amp;quot;Yes!&amp;quot; she exclaims. The music recommences, and she enters, pulling up two chairs, insisting: &amp;quot;Sit, sit!&amp;quot;  Haresha opens the briefcase and draws out something like a cake frosting bag. Inside is the brown henna paste used to stain hands and feet in intricate patterns. Protecting her dress with a small towel, she takes my right hand and places it upon her lap. She snips a teensy corner from the decorating bag and at hyper-speed tattoos an elaborate peacock on my palm, with cross-hatching and paisleys up to my fingertips. The longer the paste sits on the hands, the deeper the stain. &amp;quot;The darker the stain,&amp;quot; says Haresha, cocking a drawn brow, &amp;quot;the more a man loves you.&amp;quot; Which is why brides will keep the henna paste drying on their hands all night before their wedding day.  My left palm is decorated with a fancy fruit tree, my fingers covered in creeping ivy. The henna can last up to three weeks, fading gradually. Squeezing lemon juice on your hands before going to sleep at night keeps the color brighter longer. Before bidding namaste, Haresha flicks away a speck of the drying, cakey dye, revealing the strength of the stain. &amp;quot;Oh, no,&amp;quot; she says, laughing. &amp;quot;Too much love for you!&amp;quot;   Who? When? Where? More importantly: How? Haresha just giggles, backing out of the room, her head bobbling, music fading as she goes. I lie on the bed with my hands palms up, watching Dostana (&amp;quot;Friendship&amp;quot;), an Indian remake of I Now Pronounce You Chuck &amp;amp;amp; Larry, starring the Julia Roberts of Bollywood, Priyanka Chopra, whose makeup artist is...Mickey Contractor.   Born in 1961 in what was then Bombay (the city, casting off the colonial nomenclature, renamed itself Mumbai in 1995), Contractor grew up poor but richly loved by his mother and his grandmother, who would take him to a Bollywood movie every Saturday night. In the dark of the theater, he fell in love with the glamorous costumes, makeup, and hair embodied by the legendary screen siren Helen Richardson Khan, simply known as &amp;quot;Helen&amp;quot; because, in this neck of the woods, Helens are hard to come by.  At 16, Mickey was a high school dropout apprenticing in a hair salon where, as fate would have it, Helen appeared, put her head in his hands, and between the shampoo and rinse spoke this line of verbatim dialogue: &amp;quot;What do you want to do with your life?&amp;quot; In a single take, Contractor poured out all his hopes and dreams and a little conditioner; Helen made a call; and cut to: Contractor assisting a Bollywood makeup artist, and then working up, up, up until others were assisting him. In 2005, M.A.C Cosmetics cast him in the role of ambassador to its first Mumbai store. He&amp;#039;s been a M.A.C daddy ever since. Current billing: Director of Makeup Artistry, India. If only he could direct me to his location!  I channel surf, landing on a taped interview with a man identified as India&amp;#039;s most famous Vedic astrologist\u2014Bejan Daru\u00ADwalla, a round, bejeweled octogenarian, who accurately predicted Michael Jackson&amp;#039;s death, Haiti&amp;#039;s earthquake, and that Spain would, in the last 11 minutes of the game, win the FIFA final. Asked about the future, Daruwalla predicts he&amp;#039;ll be in Mumbai at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel on Monday for a private meeting. He&amp;#039;s here!  I wash my hands, tie a Pucci scarf over my head, don Jackie O. sunglasses, and head to the business floor, listening outside doors, peeking inside. Just as I&amp;#039;m ready to give up, a door opens, a woman beckons, I enter, and Daruwalla declares, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been expecting you.&amp;quot; Of course he has! He introduces me to Tehmi: &amp;quot;She is not my wife, she is my life! The way she takes care of me\u2014from sex to salvation. I have a lot of sex. I am thrilled!&amp;quot; Tehmi beams.  &amp;quot;Let me see your hand,&amp;quot; Daruwalla commands. &amp;quot;Mehndi. We must go to the light.&amp;quot; He pulls me to the window. &amp;quot;You will live a long life.&amp;quot; Not too long, I hope. He waves a hand: &amp;quot;Eh, 72.&amp;quot; Daruwalla sits and pronounces: &amp;quot;I am not a god, but I am a damn good astrologer. You are an ultrasensitive Gemini. Sometimes your energy is low. On Sunday, start wearing a ruby on the ring finger set in gold. This is good for energy. You are single. You must wear the colors yellow for happiness, red for sex, and blue for love. If you wear all three, some dumb idiot is going to fall flat in love with you!&amp;quot; What colors catch a rocket scientist?  &amp;quot;Every Friday, repeat this mantra 21 times: `Om Shrim Namah&amp;#039;\u2014but not if you have your period. Do as I say and you will become exquisitely feminine and beautiful. You will become an enchantress!&amp;quot; He sighs. &amp;quot;Sometimes I wish I was a woman.&amp;quot;  Daruwalla predicts &amp;quot;from June 25th 2012 to 2013, you will get what you want from life and love.&amp;quot; What about before and after? &amp;quot;Wear a yellow sapphire on your index finger starting on a Thursday\u2014it will bring you luck.&amp;quot; Great. He bear-hugs me goodbye, hands me a copy of his bio and book, Bejan Daruwalla&amp;#039;s 2011 Horoscope, and admits, &amp;quot;Sometimes I go wrong. Nobody&amp;#039;s perfect. We Indians don&amp;#039;t try to be perfect; we try to be happy.&amp;quot;  But wait! Can he predict the whereabouts of Mickey Contractor? &amp;quot;No. But I saw him down the hall with a camera crew.&amp;quot;  Under scarf and glasses I eavesdrop down the hallway until I hear a man declare, &amp;quot;My life is like a Bollywood movie!&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s my cue! I throw open a door: &amp;quot;And I&amp;#039;m costarring!&amp;quot; Mickey looks confused. I explain that I&amp;#039;m a Beauty Adventuress who&amp;#039;s come to Mumbai in search of his secrets, and to steal some of the limited line of M.A.C India products he&amp;#039;s created, which is probably too much information. I lower my glasses and flatter him with a rhetorical question: &amp;quot;Who sets the trends for makeup in Bollywood?&amp;quot; He smiles, answering, &amp;quot;Whoever does Bollywood\u2014yours truly!&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m in!  Directing me to a director&amp;#039;s chair, Mickey does my makeup Bollywood style. I sit down for the long haul. In Bollywood, makeup is the opiate of the masses, and Contractor is the drug kingpin. He says that while trends in India are moving toward a more natural look, many women still &amp;quot;love to pack it on, and every square inch has to be covered in foundation. There&amp;#039;s a fairness obsession in this country. The popular concept is fair skin and large eyes.&amp;quot; I find this ironic given Indian women&amp;#039;s beautiful skin color and Americans&amp;#039; obsession with tanning. I&amp;#039;m already fair, so Mickey begins lining my upper and lower lash lines with M.A.C Eye Kohl, shading the crease of my eye dramatically deeper using the color Embark. Dipping a tiny brush into a M.A.C Fluidline pot, he pulls down my lower lid, runs it along the ledge, and confesses, &amp;quot;M.A.C does not endorse putting Fluidline inside the eyes, but I&amp;#039;ve been doing it for five years!&amp;quot; A naughty smile. He hands me a mirror. Wow! Mata Hari! I love the look, but the inner lid\u2014is it really safe to line?  When I e-mail my dermatologist, Dennis Gross, MD, he replies: &amp;quot;Eyeliner is a skin product and that area technically speaking is not skin. It&amp;#039;s mucous membrane that has special features designed to create and maintain a healthy environment for the eye. I&amp;#039;ve seen several problems develop in patients with this bad habit: irritation (even if the label says hypoallergenic) and swelling of the glands (sty development). If the label does not say `safe to use inside the eye,&amp;#039; assume it&amp;#039;s a bad idea!&amp;quot; But it&amp;#039;s in my character to practice bad habits. While Bollywood&amp;#039;s Aishwarya Rai, Preity Zinta, and Sushmita Sen call their Contractor to build on their natural beauty, Hollywood&amp;#039;s Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, and Michelle Williams ring makeup artist Jeanine Lobell, the creator of Stila and new creative director of Kevyn Aucoin Beauty. &amp;quot;You have to be careful\u2014liquid cat eyeliner can look too retro,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I like to do cat eyelashes instead. I love a shimmery lid with lots of lashes and emphasis on the mouth. If you&amp;#039;re heavy lidded and place them on the outer corners, they tend to make the eye droop. To open up the eye, I put a few false lashes in the middle of the upper lash line\u2014they pull the eye up. Remember when Cher used to wear that kind of crazy false lash in the middle? Loved that. Lining underneath the eye\u2014apply just in the center. It keeps bedroom eyes open, really sexy.&amp;quot;  Contractor has lined me liberally, and somehow, it still looks sexy\u2014not like me at all. Yep, I&amp;#039;m ready for my closeup.  &amp;quot;In Bollywood, it&amp;#039;s like bridal makeup,&amp;quot; he says, shaking his head. &amp;quot;When I do an Indian bride, if I use a light hand they say, `God, Mickey, you&amp;#039;re charging so much and doing so little!&amp;#039; As beautiful as these women are, they&amp;#039;re extremely insecure.&amp;quot; I eyeball the products he used, my fingers growing sticky. Contractor preempts my plot with a twist\u2014he gives them to me, imparting a mantra worth repeating every day of the month: &amp;quot;Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.&amp;quot; Goodbye! Passing under the Gateway of India\u2014an 85-foot arched monument built in the early 1900s to welcome newcomers to Bombay\u2014I take the hour-long ferry ride across the Arabian Sea to Elephanta Island, where tricky monkeys and pushy vendors line the 120 stone steps to ancient rock cave temples dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva. I enter the main temple and stand before the colossal, carved Trimurti statue depicting the three faces of the Hindu trinity: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. Many Hindus believe these are all aspects of one God. It occurs to me they&amp;#039;re all aspects of everyone in the world. How do we keep our Shiva selves from destroying one another? I walk down the steps chanting quietly: Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.... Passing me on the way up are lazy tourists in palanquin chairs, carried on the slim shoulders of sweating, unsmiling Indians. If not this life, then the next.  But is there a next? Reincarnation? Dancing virgins? Harp-strumming angels? Isn&amp;#039;t there a way that we could all together rest in peace? The black ball whirls round and round, dropping on the answer to everything: Love more. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/beauty/makeup-skin-care/tips/a11559/bollywood-beauty-adventure-547461/>