Free In the Bonesetter's Waiting Room by Aarathi Prasad Page B

had become all-consuming, both inside and outside the industry. I had noticed that many of Rashmi’s clients were middle-aged women, presumably in search of rejuvenation. Surely, though, there must be a downside?
    â€˜People understand the risk, yes, they do, but they say let’s go ahead and do it,’ Rashmi told me. ‘The next woman from the party has become thinner, let’s do it. Thin is very desirable – to the extent that women try to get into their teenage daughters’ clothes – but older women need a fat percentage: your overall weight distribution changes with age. But they all want to maintain a waistline. We are fighting the natural [ageing process] – they cut down on carbs so much they come to me with hair falling out, with dark circles under their eyes …’
    I could see how it could easily become a vicious circle and how quick-fix procedures would become desirable, even necessary, to people whose lives were not lived in front of audiences of hundreds of millions.
    â€˜My patients are mostly from the film industry, but there are also bank employees, teachers, housewives – today everyone wants to look beautiful. I have lots of male patients now too. Before, if there was one scratch to their car men would get annoyed, yet they didn’t seem to care about how they themselves looked,’ Rashmi joked.
    Indeed, though I didn’t see any men in Rashmi’s waiting room while I was there, most of my companions were just ordinary citizens – an older woman, probably in her late fifties, wearing a bindi on her forehead and a traditional salwar kameez; another woman in her late twenties maybe, in jeans; another in her early thirties wearing a mini skirt; and a fourth girl in ripped jeans and comfortable loafers.
    While I waited, I chatted with a woman in her twenties who had moved to Mumbai from Tanzania to go to medical school. ‘I think in this period in time we are very self-conscious,’ she told me. ‘Even as a doctor, when a patient comes to you, they look up to you and if I have pimple, they think, why doesn’t she take care of herself? Or if we tell them to lose weight, then we have to be fit too. Even my mother is a patient here. She has Botox. She was sceptical the first time, so Rashmi did half her face to show her how it would compare. Rashmi does not want her to look unnatural – she says you should age gracefully. And every year my mother comes from Tanzania to see her.’
    One of the more interesting improvements Rashmi offered was skin lightening. Cosmetic skin-lightening products are a sizeable industry in India, with ‘before and after’ advertisements on billboards across the country and pages of classified bridal ads in the Times of India every Sunday seeking ‘Slim, Fair, B’ful girl’; ‘beautiful, professionally qualified, fair Hindu girl’; ‘seeking cultured fair beautiful girl’; ‘Qualified, Fair, Slim girl’; ‘Beautiful tall girl for very fair, handsome vegetarian boy’ …
    â€˜The ideal of beauty is light skin,’ Rashmi explained to me. ‘Actually you can look like a frog. But the ideal bride is a woman with light skin; at front desks in offices the receptionist should have light skin. We are not one “race” in India – we have so called Aryan, Mongolian, Dravidian types. So we are used to working with different skin. Even in south India, where people are thought of as darker-skinned, the Iyengars [high caste Brahmans] are lighter; in Mangalore people are lighter. I used to think the desire to be lighter was socio-economic but now I don’t – we don’t get lower economic groups at our practice. But the thing is, if you are dark, it is harder to maintain an even skin tone, so I think it’s more about that than a particular shade. The biggest thing people come to me for is skin tone or colour. But tone can change with