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

seems more stiff, mask-like. But noticeable though the difference is, the true cost of her nose job was measured in more than aesthetics. Koena said that, after the rhinoplasty, her ‘bones started swelling up’ and that a series of corrective operations ensued. She was left in severe pain and housebound, while rumours circulated that her face had been so disfigured that it was difficult for her even to smile.
    The studios shied away and her career ground to a halt. In a 2014 interview she told the Times of India , ‘I sat at home initially. But I could not take it any more and started going out with that face of mine … I didn’t hide anything. But people spoke and wrote the worst … about me.’ She was also quoted in a film magazine talking about the scale of plastic surgery consumerism in Bollywood. ‘I can give you a long list of names with their long list of surgeries,’ she said. ‘My list of surgeries is really tiny compared to many leading stars of the day. I at least had the courage to come out and talk.’ And though her face has recovered, it is no longer one that mainstream Bollywood has since deemed attractive enough to cast.
    Farah Khan, by contrast, has become a hero to some after owning up to post-pregnancy surgery of the sort Dr Arolkar says is increasingly popular: the ‘mommy-make-over’. Khan started as a choreographer before becoming one of Bollywood’s biggest producer-directors (with blockbuster credits including Om Shanti Om ). Though she has appeared on screen, Farah is not the type to be seen in hot pants or tiny sari blouses, as Bollywood’s impossibly lithe starlets tend to. Rather, her figure is more like the average woman’s. Usually undertaken by women who want no more children, the ‘mommy-makeover’ comprises one or more procedures designed to counter the effects of pregnancy and active motherhood.
    A few years after giving birth to triplets, and after researching the procedure thoroughly, she decided the hanging tummy she was left with and which dieting and exercise had failed to budge would have to go. When I spoke to her, her openness about double standards and women reclaiming their bodies after having children was refreshing. One of the ‘problems’ of being a celebrity is the back catalogue of available photographs that provide the media with ready-made ‘before’ and ‘after’ comparisons.
    Women do come under far closer scrutiny in this respect than men. Even when some of Bollywood’s favourite male actors fall prey, they usually get off with the odd mentions of wrinkles filled. In India, as everywhere else, women’s bodies are perceived as fair game, hotness before childbirth mutating into mummy yumminess after. But, as Farah has often stated, ‘There is nothing to hide.’
    Celebrities who stand up for themselves post-surgery in the press or social media are still relatively rare, but they do exist. Actress Anushka Sharma spoke out recently ‘to end the noise’, as she put it, after a barrage of tweets criticising her newly augmented lips. ‘I felt bullied. I didn’t know that people could be so mean,’ she told the newspapers. ‘Some of the stuff was quite funny but some of it was such pure vitriol that I cried. It’s because we don’t reply to them that people think they can get away with anything. I didn’t think I had to inform the world before getting my lips enhanced. It’s my body and my decision.’ In 2015, Shilpa Shetty (actress and star of Celebrity Big Brother in the UK) also admitted to having had four nose jobs; and the legendary Zeenat Aman came out publicly in support of cosmetic surgery in general. ‘To each his own … I’m in favour of it,’ she said.
    Where Bollywood stars go, everyone else follows, from the older generations to what Dr Arolkar calls ‘nubile teenagers’ who want