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Dream merchants all
THERE ARE magic wand solutions for everything, which can give even Harry Potter a run for his craft and popularity. And Delhiwallahs keep looking for such wands, especially to shape up their body. There are two clear super favourites for them though. The first is this national obsession to look fair. The second obsession is of course the desire for that perfect figure. Other priorities follow.
A cursory glance at most of the newspapers will reveal that more than news, the papers carry advertisements hawking all varieties of fares that promise to transform the body into a supple and graceful figure. The array of services and products offered is as varied as it is complex. We have everything - from massage parlours, ranging from the benign Kerala oil massage to the modern Thai massage, hair-transplant clinics, and centres to take care of obesity. Name anything, and you have it, every fad will be attended to.
It speaks volumes of our social and moral degradation, but fair complexion is listed as the most important pre-requisite for a bride in most matrimonial advertisements for women, getting precedence over even education in most cases. Curiously the advertisements for grooms do not refer to this aspect at all - there the usual emphasis is on tall, handsome, educated, well-employed, etc.)
The craving for that hourglass figure is a relatively new phenomenon, propelled by the success of Indian beauties in at international pageants. This has ignited the spiralling juggernaut of the so-called weight loss centres, which are mushrooming like the mosquitoes, breeding profusely and sucking the blood from the unassuming. The benefits of staying fit and trim were never in doubt. What is in doubt however is the jurisprudence of chucking the natural support system for crutches, whose veracity itself is questionable. From being prohibitively priced and confined to the affluent neighbourhoods, these centres have now spawned down market cousins all over. The effects of an open economy can be seen from what competition has done to this sector, dragging it down from the stratospheric heights of the super-rich to the firm grasp of the hoi polloi.
Still more intriguing is the money that must be getting circulated through these body bazaars. In Delhi alone, there are such shops in almost every corner, offering Turkish body massage, Korena body massage besides beauty tips from experts. In a country where a substantial part of the population still lives below the poverty line, in the black hole of illiteracy, at the bottom of the basic life indices, it is a grim paradox. It is all the more shameful to see in the mean streets of the Capital, innocent children scavenging for food.
Then there is this evergreen and instant solution to baldness that continues to be a universal favourite. There are also job specific solutions like those who try to make up for a drought of talent by going in for a nose job, a teeth job or even a bust job! Like all markets, this body bazaar also has seasonal variations and cyclic vicissitudes. The peak season is usually linked to the marriage season and festivals. This is also probably one of the first arenas in which the age and sex barrier has been decisively demolished; the bug afflicts people of all ages. And perhaps will continue to do so for ages to come.
APS MALHOTRA
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