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A reason to smile
‘For me it is much more invigorating to give a lecture to 5,000 girls in a government college campus on personal grooming and hygiene than 100 girls sitting bored in an elite school’
Bodies sashaying in expensive designer labels, wild parties where name-dropping, talking about nocturnal exploits and experimenting with drugs is part of the game. In this plastic world, hobnobbing with the rich and the infamous, Musarrat Misbah watches the scenes change like an amused bystander, never becoming a part of it and never quite gelling with the crowd.
This is by choice for she doesn’t want to be part of that ‘cool crowd’: “I don’t need to market my label like others do. We’ve gone too far to be doing this,” she says emphasizing the “we” and explaining: “Depilex is not mine alone, it’s a family venture and everyone works as hard as I do. Honestly speaking, after a long hard day’s work I just want to relax and be with my family. I don’t know how others do it. Either they don’t have enough work or have loads of time.”
From a single salon in 1980 that her father opened for her on Tariq Road, when she came back armed with a bag full of diplomas after having completed various hairstyling and make-up courses from England (leaving behind a broken marriage and her four-month-old son in the care of her mother), she now runs 18 centres all over Pakistan with a staff of over 500. They have franchises in Singapore, Dubai, London, New Jersey, Sydney and even Mexico. “We’ve grown and expanded and like how, beyond even our own wildest imagination.”
Reminiscing about those days when there were only a handful of salons like Living Doll, Sisters, Beena Beauty Parlour, Azra and Saeeda’s Salon and, of course, Leslie’s, she says: “The day I opened I became competition for them.” She started with eight girls, one of them a foreigner. “I remember how our clients would get impressed by the gori girl — Sheila,” she chuckles. “I’d invite specialists from England, from the schools I’d studied in, to teach my girls as well as others. The classes became an instant hit.” Today, Musarrat says there is hardly a single salon in Karachi that does not have their trained workers.
But somehow Depilex, while a household name, does not carry with it the snob tag that some other salon boutiques do despite the fact that Margaret Thatcher, Lady Diana, Nusrat Bhutto, Kulsum Nawaz (Mrs Nawaz Sharif), Jemima Khan, Christopher Lee, James Fox, Marie Atkins, etc, have all patronized it. “This is my bread and butter. I would rather cater to the masses than a very small segment of society to pander to. Ours is an altogether different ballgame. It’s not just about make-up and hairstyling but about grooming and learning how to look after yourself.”
Names don’t matter to Musarrat, nor do labels. “For me it is much more invigorating to give a lecture to 5,000 girls in a government college campus on personal grooming and hygiene in, say, Gujranwala, any time, than 100 girls sitting bored, fiddling with their cells, who have nothing to ask or say, in an elite school in Clifton or Defence.”
Among her professional success are the different characters Moin Akhtar has portrayed in Loose Talk. “I learned specialized make-up in England. It’s refreshing and challenging from the regular, everyday monotony. Moin Akhtar is great to work with. He can sit for hours and is very patient. For him time is no constraint as long as we get the perfect job done for a complete transformation.” For certain characters, she’s had to work on his face for three-to four hours at a stretch. “I remember he wanted real horns to play the devil. So we got him a pair.” While she’s loved quite a few of his portrayals, “Gulgee’s and that of a jinn far surpassed any others.”
While lady luck has been on her side from the time she decided to open up shop, her personal life has been nothing less than a real-life soap opera. So much so that Fatima Surraiya Bajiya wrote a play on it called Asawari, in which Musarrat played the lead. “I don’t know if it was based on my life but people said they could relate to it. However, Kismat Ke Sitaray, the first of a series of plays based on true stories by Sultana Siddiqui, was based on my life experiences.”
Much to her discomfiture, not because her troubled past agonizes her even now but because she thinks people may see it as a ploy to garner sympathy, Musarrat recalls her story of her first marriage which was celebrated with all the dhoom dhaam and shor sharaba of any traditional wedding. “I was naive and excited at the prospect of clothes, jewellery and so much pampering. I was in my first year and, I think, in retrospect, too young to cope with a disturbed marriage.” In a movie-like scene she ran away and still marvels at herself for her grit. The second marriage took her to England. Later, she moved to Lahore on her husband’s insistence to open a salon there. “Lahore was a happening place and Sante started doing very well. My husband would come every six months, take the money and go back to London.” Then one fine day he came and decided not to go back. “He would come to the salon, sit there and talk to girls and became overly friendly with one in particular. He got too involved and I stopped going to the salon. Then one day my disturbed private life, which I had taken such pains to hide, spilled all over the salon. The whole wide world knew about us and you know how tongues wag.”
Musarrat came back to Karachi broken-hearted but four months later, with the help of her father, a pillar of strength, she rebounded and went back to Lahore. “I opened Depilex and it gave me back my lost courage and shattered confidence.”
Asked if she’d ever contemplate marriage again, she ponders and then answers resolutely: “I don’t think that will be possible now because a man cannot accept a woman who is confident, independent and one who can take her own decisions, which I’ve become now.”
And yet she’s not cynical. “All this has been a blessing in disguise. If I’d compromised, I would never have been a businesswoman running this chain.” But best of all, the outcome of her two bad marriages have been the two most precious gifts — a son and a daughter.
Her business now in its 25th year and she has a son who is 26 and a 16-year-old daughter. Musarrat is celebrating her salon’s silver jubilee not with the usual round of promos, pomp and show but something more sublime. “It’s payback time and all the profits we make this year will go into Smile Again, a project that helps female burn victims by providing them first-aid, reconstructive surgery, psychological support and adequate shelter.” It all started three years ago when Tehmina Durrani brought in Fakhra Bilal, an acid attack victim, and asked for monetary help as she needed to be sent to Italy where the Smile Again project had pledged to help her.
Realizing the issue of domestic violence, the Italian organization contacted Musarrat and persuaded her to open a branch in Pakistan. “The first time we advertised we received 32 victims, all girls with various degrees of deformities. All of them were not fresh victims but had been suffering for a long time.
“We sent three females and a child to Italy with the help of the government of Italy, but realized it was expensive and more people could be helped if the doctors came here. The organization sends a team of four to six surgeons and they operate here. These volunteer doctors — I call them angels — come every three months (so far they’ve visited four times and performed 45 operations). They save up their holidays there to work miracles here. In the meantime, we get the required tests done, get operation theatres ready for them, etc.” While it’s heartrending to see so much pain, it’s all been very self-satisfying and gratifying, even if it’s just a drop in the ocean. It took us nine months just to get registered and now that things are in place, we can approach people for donations as Depilex cannot do it alone,” she says.
And so these days, you may see Musarrat Misbah running from doctors to hospitals to philanthropists to get them on her side to wage a war against violence against women, of which she herself was once a victim.
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