1 million shades of white

blogger granny getting the treatment

I went to the hairdresser this week to get ready for the summer.  Hideshi the hairdresser wears white and all the other hairdressers in the salon wear white; it is a sign of summer.  In the winter they wear black. They are kind and skilful and I go out looking quite a lot better than when I walked in.  I wouldn't say I could be mistaken for Angelina Jolie or Liz Hurley but certainly it is a big improvement on what went into the salon! The same thing is happening to all the other clients, they all come in feeling one way and go out feeling smarter and of course happier.

Dadi Janki doesn't need a hairdo

At the start of the week I went to see my friends the Brahma Kumaris who also wear white. The remarkable Dadi Janki, aged 99 had just flown into England and was meeting up with several hundred people, mostly also dressed in white.  Her beauty treatment is of a different kind, she reminds everyone that they all have beautiful souls and that they can keep them like that if they remember how important the soul is.  Her beauty regime isn't snipping hair and painting nails, it is meditation and kindness to all creatures.  It is absence of anger and no desire, no jealousy or malice and particularly not basing your happiness quotient on gains and losses.  It is contentment and it shouldn't be hard to come by.  I recommend meeting her sisters and brothers dressed in white to feel how real this wave of contentment is.  See the photograph below, all in white, all happy, no sign of hairdos or artificiality, just very sweet and committed people with open hearts.  It does though take a different kind of work to realise that beauty.  Even if you aren't ready to do it now, you and I can be very glad that Dadi and all the Brahma Kumaris are there doing it and holding the door right wide open for any of us to follow when we are ready.

This is hundreds of brothers and sister Brahma Kumari in Mount Abu, hundreds of shades of white.