Read Online In the Bonesetter's Waiting Room by Aarathi Prasad - Free Book Online Page A

pressure. There was a man from a village in Gujarat who wanted six fingers! Turned out lots of people had that in his village. The thing is, you don’t want to look out of the ordinary.’ Satish told me how some actresses were asking for breast reductions even in their seventies. ‘In the old days, actresses were larger, they had full breasts – in India it was a good thing, it was a sign of fertility.’ Traditional representations of the human form in India do seem to have an extensive history of fêting the rotund rather than the svelte. From the rounded stomachs of Harappan adult male and buxom female figurines, to corpulent personifications of scriptural heroes on the shikara of modern temples, beauty has seldom been the ripped abdominals of the classical Greek ideal.
    In more recent decades, the perception of the ideal body, at least in Mumbai, has publicly undergone a seismic shift. Instead of looking like the boy next door (with a bit of puppy fat), movie heroes became sexy versions of the incredible hulk. Where actresses were once rounded and buxom, they began to follow a trend towards size zero. Bariatric (stomach stapling) surgeries are big business (and openly flaunted by politicians, according to Dr Arolkar). Then in 1991 unfavourable economic conditions forced devaluation of the rupee and an influx of foreign investment followed. In the ensuing decades the Indian economy almost quadrupled in size. Foreign capital flooded into Bollywood and Bollywood in turn became a global export. Western influence increased with the establishment of MTV and the arrival of international glossy fashion magazines such as Vogue . Now, India’s fashionable were watching the world – and the world began looking back. Projected onto gigantic screens wherever its diaspora could be found, the exquisite faces and perfect bodies of the Mumbai film industry’s celebrities were constantly before the public gaze – adoring, or critical. It makes perfect sense that Mumbai would embrace cosmetic surgery the way it has. Nowadays, of course, it’s not just celebrities who are constantly observed: India also has 118 million active social media accounts. Staying current, including knowing what it means to be beautiful, has never been more immediate.
    For those whose jobs require them to stay in the limelight, the pressures are even more acute. In an industry where appearance is everything, there is a particular vulnerability: adoration might turn to career-ending criticism without warning. The media are, of course, only too ready to ridicule anyone who either has surgery or who does not conform to their own version of perfection. It’s a lose–lose situation. Unsurprisingly, many celebrities who do have procedures go to great lengths to keep them secret. Dr Arolkar had already cautioned me that talking to an Indian celebrity about their cosmetic surgery would be next to impossible, but I knew of two people who, early on, had broken ranks to speak publicly about plastic surgery: the actress Koena Mitra and one of Bollywood’s few female film directors, Farah Khan.
    Despite roles in several Bollywood films, Koena’s fame as an actress was overshadowed by becoming an exemplar of the perils of plastic surgery. ‘She’s sort of insignificant now,’ a magazine editor told me. ‘Her entire career was ruined by bad surgery.’ Though I was unable to secure an interview, she has previously commented extensively on her experience, speaking frankly about the choices she had made and the impact they had had on what could have been a significant career in Bollywood.
    A former model (with a masters degree in psychology), it’s hard to see what could have been improved upon before her surgery in 2011 – after all, that symmetrical face, wide almond eyes and enviable figure had already won her beauty crowns and catwalk gigs. By contrast, in the ‘after’ photos her face