Flame: The Story of My Mother: Universally recognized as much for her flaming tresses and her inimitable style, as for her stupendous and sustained global entrepreneurial success, Shahnaz Husain is a legend in the world of cosmetology and pioneering Ayurvedic beauty treatments.
Starting with a small beauty parlour in the veranda of her home, set up with the help of her devoted husband and daughter to provide natural beauty treatments and remedies to generations of women unhappy with their hair and skin, her company, Shahnaz Herbals, today employs 1800 people, with exports to sixty countries and a range of over 250 high-selling products.
In this warm and affectionate biography, shot through with vividly remembered anecdotes of her feisty mother’s early years of struggle and the close-knit family life they all shared, her daughter, Nelofar Currimbhoy, provides a fascinating insight into the personal and professional life of this remarkable woman – who was married into a conservative Muslim family at the age of sixteen. Chronicling the early years of the business, Nelofar pays tribute to the hand her father Nasir Husain had in steering Shahnaz Herbals to its present success.
She talks of her mother’s insistent stress on using only the finest ingredients in her products, her contempt for the spurious, short-lived gains of chemical remedies and advertising and about how well her mother balanced her irrepressible impulse to succeed with her deeply ingrained family values; her personal life seamlessly entwining with the professional to make her the woman she is.
Beautifully recreating the incredible ups and the inevitable downs of her mother’s extraordinary life, and knowing her as only a daughter can, Nelofar Currimbhoy manages to infuse the writing of this charmed journey with something of that special Shahnaz Husain spirit.
