After trying to write a profile of ‘Grishma in Newtown’ for 10 years, Mad Chapman settles for writing this review.

Grishma is not impressed. She’s peering closely at my face and shaking her head. I haven’t been to see her in 18 months and she doesn’t like what the various technicians of Auckland have done to my eyebrows.

“They’ve taken too much off the top,” she says, pointing at my left eyebrow. “This right one is not so bad but this one… no.”

She directs me to the seat and works for a few minutes, then I’m standing up again for her assessment. After another long stare, I’m back in the seat for more tweaking. We do this three times before Grishma is satisfied. 

“When are you back in Wellington?” She asks.

Next month, I say.

“OK come back to me then. And don’t let anyone touch them.”

As I’m getting ready to pay, a full five minutes after walking through the door, I steel myself for our usual dance. “Will you let me write a story about you now?” I ask, yet again. I’ve wanted to write about Grishma for nearly 10 years but she always shoos me away. First she was simply reluctant, then, in 2021, she was too busy. Don’t write about me, she said, I have enough customers.

The next year, she said no again but told me she was about to retire and I could write about her then. She just needed to train two more women to thread to her standards before she stepped away.

Now I’ve got good odds, I think. It’s January 2026, Grishma has two other women working with her – one of whom watched intently as Grishma critiqued my botched eyebrows – and with more staff she could handle more customers if I profiled her. But still she declines, as always with a laugh.

“When I die, you can write a story,” she says this time. I tell her people want to know about her now, while she’s still alive and still the best eyebrow threader in New Zealand. She laughs. “You can write a google review. Not the whole story, just a review.” 

So this is my review. 

Grishma is an artist. Her instrument is a piece of cotton thread and her canvases walk the streets of Wellington every day. Her work can be seen in parliament, in the Supreme Court, in operating rooms and throughout school grounds. She is meticulous and a perfectionist and, as I’ve learned many times over, Grishma always knows when someone has tampered with her work.

For the past 25 years, Grishma has threaded (and waxed and plucked) hair in Newtown. Her business’s name is Sai Beauty Care, but none of her clients would know this. “Go to Grishma’s” is always a top comment when a new resident asks for threading recommendations. “Grishma in Newtown” is another. She’s particularly recommended by and for those with thicker brows, including men. If you need to find her, just search “Grishma Newtown”. 

The first time I ever saw Grishma was the first time I ever had my eyebrows done. I was 16, had a healthy monobrow and was about to shave my head. My older sister insisted on taking me to see Grishma because “when you’re bald, all anyone will look at is your eyebrows” and my brow was deemed a task too great for tweezers. My sisters went to Grishma because their flatmate went to Grishma. Their flatmate went to Grishma because her friend went to Grishma. With no website, no advertising and no signage, Grishma was all word-of-mouth among Asian and Polynesian women.

We walked into what I think was a fabric store but may even have been a restaurant on Riddiford Street and were directed upstairs to Grishma’s makeshift salon. 

I was instructed to lie down and “pull” – use each of my hands to pull one eyelid down and the forehead skin up, making the brow taut. In other words, I was to be an accomplice in my own torture. 

Grishma wound a piece of cotton string between her fingers and pressed it across the bottom of my eyebrow. She leaned over and I saw that she had the end of the string in her mouth. That’s strange, I thought, I wonder what that’s- and then her head tilted back and I saw stars. 

As the twisted thread was pulled tight, it snagged all my hairs, hairs that had probably been there since birth. I pulled my eyelid as tight as I could while tears pooled in my ears. Grishma moved the string a millimeter and pulled again. And again. And again. After what felt like hours, she switched to the other eyebrow. Eventually, with an aching jaw from tensing my entire face the whole time, I thought I was done.

“Upper lip?” Grishma asked. I had come this far and figured if a bald head meant everyone would look at my bushy eyebrows, a bald head and sleek eyebrows meant everyone would look at my moustache. “OK,” I said.

The upper lip was much, much worse.

It was my first time meeting Grishma and I hated it. But boy did my eyebrows look fantastic.

That was 16 years ago and despite my scepticism, my sister’s insistence that “it hurts less and less the more you go” proved true, though I quickly chickened out of the upper lip threading and my go-to order became “eyebrow thread tidy up, upper lip wax”.

A few years after that fateful first meeting, Grishma moved less than 100m up Riddiford Street to her own space, where she has now been operating for 12 years.

I have moved out of Wellington a number of times in those 12 years and each time I return to Grishma whenever I’m in town. Despite trying both cheap and expensive salons all over Auckland, none come close to the care, attention and precision of Grishma. 

When I first visited her, an eyebrow threading was $6, possibly the cheapest option in the whole city. Today, it’s $17.00, nearly a 300% increase but still one of the cheapest options. 

Grishma’s eyebrow salon is as pragmatic as she is. The storefront is frosted glass with a heavy aluminium sliding door reminiscent of a prefab construction site office. Step up into the small waiting room with eight chairs, a water cooler and no receptionist. Instead, a set of small laminated numbers determines your place in the line. On the wall is a laminated Listener article published in 2003, explaining this strange new eyebrow technique and speaking to two threaders in Auckland. Every 7-10 minutes, a client emerges from the back room, brow smarting red and gleaming with aloe vera. Always satisfied.

“Hello my friend!”

Grishma is feeling better about my eyebrows. It’s been a month since my last visit and I haven’t let anyone near them. “They’re growing… slowly,” she says. She’s once again peering into my face, tilting my chin up and side to side as she explains to her staffer what happened. 

“This one, don’t touch the top,” she says, tilting my cursed left brow up. “And this one” – around swings my face – “actually, don’t touch the top on that one either. Just a little tidy on the bottom. Then I’ll check.”

Grishma’s new worker, who has been in training for six months, moves meticulously. She’s much slower (a whole six minutes to Grishma’s two) but when she finishes, Grishma is impressed. “She’s done a very good job,” she says, a little proudly. But still, I’m instructed to lean back and the two of them lean over my face as the new girl slowly (“tiny, tiny, tiny,” coaches Grishma) removes exactly two hairs from the top of my left eyebrow. 

“They’re looking much better than last time.” She then asks after my mum, as she always does even though I haven’t brought my mum to her in half a decade, and says, “upper lip?”

I muster all the self-confidence I’ve gained in the past five years and say, “I don’t do that any more.” She just nods. “Good choice.”

I already know Grishma will never agree to a sitdown interview – I think I’ve always known, but the game of asking is part of the fun. Instead I ask for a single photo, “for my review”. She looks at me sternly then laughs. “My hair is not good!”

I beg her, please just one photo of her in her salon with her two trainees and then she won’t ever have to answer any of my annoying questions. She looks ready to tell me to piss off when the one other customer – a friendly and ancient woman – says something to Grishma in a language I don’t recognise and she softens. “OK let me speak to the girls,” she says and shuts the door on me. A moment later she reappears in the reception to declare that no, all three of them have bad hair and can’t take a photo. 

“Next time,” she says. “We’ll be prepared.”

“But I won’t be back for two months!” I plead, knowing full well we’ll have the exact same conversation in two months. I’m so so close and surely can’t publish a review of Grishma without showing Grishma herself.

“Write your review now and in two months you can take a photo.”

I know better than to argue.