Browse through all the glossy magazines and all the lovely pictures and images that are available offline and online! All those lovely damsels will pale into insignificance when compared to all the naturally radiant Indian women who live in our villages and towns.

Beauty should be experienced at an internal level. The laugh lines, the wrinkles that appear with age and the creases of worry and anxiety that line their faces and their foreheads add to their beauty. Such women do not believe in dying their hair to camouflage their age. They wear their age with pride, dignity, and graciousness. The salt and peppered hair give them a mature peaceful look. The young damsels ooze health and the sparkle of sheer grit and determination that you see in their eyes will tell you about the challenges that they face on a daily basis.

That is the spirit of the true Indian women who live miles and aeons away from tinsel town and Bollywood! Unlike their Bollywood counterparts, these women cannot dream of buying expensive creams and makeup kits to give them drop dead gorgeous looks. They cannot afford to dream of exclusive designer wear.

But they look stunning with their simple brightly colored organic hand woven sarees and skirts. Lovely tinkling glass bangles and a simple round red kumkum bindi are their only accessories. Yes, the tribal people also make use of the metal or other organic stuff to create their own jewelry and they wear it with pride. We will also find them adding that line of cooling homemade Kajal to their sparkling eyes.

Oh! These beautiful young and old ladies don’t need to embellish their features. They are naturally beautiful. They may not realize this. These beautiful folks are not even aware of how stunning their simplicity is! They are not educated at all. But they do know that wearing the red kumkum bindi is a tradition that has been practiced for centuries.

No married woman in her right mind will avoid wearing the red kumkum bindi. Married Indian women feel incomplete if they do not wear the red kumkum bindi. Somehow the face looks wan and dull without the red bindi. 

There is a reason behind why this red kumkum bindi is so culturally significant. It is believed that we all have dormant energy at the base of our spines. When we meditate or sit down and chant or pray for a while, this dormant energy is awakened. This energy rises up to the 7th Chakra that lies between our eyebrows in the middle of our forehead.

When we apply a red kumkum bindi in the center of our forehead, we are able to retain all that positive energy within our body and dispel all the negative energy around us. The bindi represents Shakti and women are protected from negative vibrations. They seem to be pulsating with vibrant energy for a longer duration of time because they always wear a red kumkum bindi. Always!

Perhaps for the lay man or the fashion conscious women of today, it has become a style or fashion statement or trend. Bindis these days are mostly stickers which come in all shapes and sizes. We even have transparent bindis these days. Bindis that match our outfits are the latest craze. Not wearing a bindi was also a trend a long time back.

As youngsters, we all dabble in fashion and the latest trends. But at some point of time in our lives, we will realize the worth of this rich legacy that our ancestors have passed down to us over centuries. 

Timeless ageless beauty can always come from inner peace and bliss. We need to feel happy and lively first. We need to radiate positive energy first. We need to spend time practicing all those traditional rituals to create that kind of positive energy within ourselves.

And when we reach that level of awareness and are spiritual conscious we will want to revert back to our roots and practice the simple profoundly effective rituals that our ancestors created for us.

And it is at such times that we realize that a beautiful smile, a bright hand loom cotton saree, a red kumkum bindi, red or green glass bangles, handcrafted tribal jewellery, some silver anklets and an earthen pot carried with grace, dignity and quiet pride reflects the true spirit and beauty of Indian women.

Trends may come and go. What was in vogue yesterday may well be obsolete by the time you read this article.