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Neeman
Sobhan
Last
night I attended a 'gala' dinner at Roma's elegant Hassler
Hotel on the Spanish Steps. It was an India promotion event
featuring the pretentious fusion cooking that one either loves
or hates. I respect tradition but I also love breaking them,
flirting with the unconventional-- as long as it is done well.
So, I enjoyed my mango soup; my quail garam masala with cherry
sauce; and the millefeuille pastry layered with saffron-yoghurt
(srikand). But many foreign guests balked saying, "This
is not Indian food." I grinned unsympathetically at them
as they poked through their landscaped plates. They were complaining
only because the food was unexpected, not because it was un-tasty.
I and others applauded the chef, Rahul Akerkar, (who cooks
at his Mumbai restaurant 'Indigo') as he sauntered through
the courtyard full of candlelit tables saying: "Hope
you're enjoying the food?" I looked at some of the politely
insincere nodding faces and thought: Sorry that you didn't
get a taste of 'authentic' Indian food, but stretch your imagination
and think from the food-artist's point of view. Think differently,
adventurously. Creative people shouldn't have to rise to other
people's expectations. How can individuals and cultures grow
if all we do is maintain status quo and never try out different
ways of expressing ourselves?
[As
an aside, during my last trip to Dhaka in March, my experience
of eating our own innovative chef Tommy Miah's Bangali nouvelle
cuisine was quite favourable. Once you decided to suspend
your pre-conceived notions of what to expect from British
Bangali food fused through a confusion of identities and ideas,
the resulting 'fusion food' was actually quite pleasant to
the palette. Or we were just lucky with the dishes we had
ordered. And for an evening out it was fun, after all, nobody
is asking us to partake of this hyped-up culinary stew everyday
and replace good, old-fashioned Bangali home cooking, which
I wouldn't eat in a restaurant anyway, unless places like
Kasturi turned glamorous and branched off from Purana Paltan
and opened franchises in the republic of Gulshan.]
Now
to get back to the artist in the kitchen and to make a long
story short (actually, as we proceed, it will be revealed
that the purpose of this verbal rambling is not to encourage
the Picasso of Pots 'n Pans or the Salvador Dali of Daals,
but to make a short story long, or to be more precise, tall!)
So,
having put in the word for breaking rules gracefully, and
for giving the thumbs down to the standardizing of social
perceptions and expectations, I have a question to ask of
everyone. WHO the HECK created the standards of female beauty
to read long and lanky? When did the world pass the regulation
as pre-requisites to beauty, the exaggerated and unrealistic
proportions of the under nourished six foot Amazonian on the
catwalk? How did the ideal of beauty (it self a silly notion
in a world where every woman with confidence can be beautiful
in her individual way) become so askew that normally proportioned
women now consider themselves un-beautiful because they don't
measure up in a world where you are never tall or thin enough.
Whoever is responsible for this skewed image, may he/she go
to a hell of being doomed to eat fusion cooking night and
day: omelettes with caramellised <>korola (bitter gourd)
for breakfast; cauliflower soup laced with molasses for lunch;and
for dinner, a fish au gratin in cheese and dark chocolate.
I
had just put down my spoonful of silver wrapped blueberries
at the Hassler when the organiser announced that Miss India
World 2004 would now reveal herself. The lights swung up towards
the garden terrace overlooking the courtyard and down the
steps descended a vision of a draped sari, and it descended
and descended, till we finally got to see the person that
actually went with it. A thin odalisque in a city of tall
obelisks! As with the food, the audience was a bit hesitant.
Was she a beauty or was this hype? I applauded, and so did
the others, but a bit uncertainly. Beauty has many faces,
and we were willing to cheer this sweet young thing although
she was a bit too tall and too thin. But my nagging, unanswered
question was: was she there ONLY on the strength of her height
and thinness?
Had
we lived in a world where only curvy women of medium height
were the ideal of beauty, I would have stood up and given
a standing ovation to this lanky girl for making it against
the odds of convention. But given the accepted beauty standards
these days, where only severely tall women need apply and
the rest can go home, I feel the need to temper my applause.
Don't
get me wrong; I am happy for self-confident women who are
over five feet ten inches, qualifying them to show off their
height to advantage on the catwalk. But a beauty pageant (a
disturbing institution to start with, which determines the
way many impressionable young women judge themselves) should
have the social responsibility to include a variety of physical
feminine types and not discriminate against women who are
not of a certain height. The message they transmit is that
only tall is beautiful and short is not; that grace and sensuousness
cannot belong to the less than tall category; that being a
model is being the 'model' woman.
This
has played havoc with the self-image of many insecure women
of average height and normal weight. I have heard recent cases
of young girls getting bone-extension surgery in the legs
as if they were getting hair-extension. This is as disturbing
as anorexia, eating disorders and liposuction. Consider complexion:
dark skin is in and pale skin is out, at least in the Western
world. But why cannot both be considered attractive--it would
certainly prevent many women from contracting skin cancer
from excessive tanning, and women in the east from damaging
their complexion with bleaching creams.
I
really feel that the notion of standardising beauty ideals
should be seriously reconsidered as a social issue. And beauty
pageants could play a healthy, responsible role in this. After
the bathing suits and evening dresses, and the ridiculous
'intellectual' hurdle of the all-important question-round
is over (Oh! So NOW we agree that beauty is not really physical?),
I think organisers should broaden their perspectives to include
all types of beauty.
I
met 20-year-old Sayali Bhagat, the present Miss India World
at another party in Rome and enjoyed meeting this delightful
girl. She has a charming smile and a pleasing personality
but lacks that combination of confidence, glamour and magnetism
that could make her more memorable on the ramp. Frankly, apart
from her height, she was just the pretty girl-next-door. Turns
out, she was not even the one originally crowned, which was
Lakshmi Pandit who turned out to be married and had to resign,
upgrading the first runner-up!
The
remarks I made about Sayali Bhagat relate only to the object
packaged as 'Miss India', the created symbol of processed
beauty. My personal opinion about the girl from Nasik, studying
Management in Mumbai University and chatting graciously with
everyone was that though she is not international beauty pageant
material, she is a lovely girl, nevertheless. Actually, delete
the 'nevertheless'. A woman's beauty is neither conditional,
nor can it be standardised or replicated; and Sayali, tall
or short, and whether you win the Miss Universe title in China
or not, I think you are a beautiful woman and it was a pleasure
meeting you.
sobhan10@hotmail.com
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(R) thedailystar.net 2004
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