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Friday, March 29, 2024
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Venezuelisation of India

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Not surprisingly, I have spent the past week thinking of Lou Bega, he of `Mambo No 5′ fame. Not surprising, because what else could one, as a proud Indian, be humming in the week of Lara Dutta’s Miss Universe success but, something like, a little bit of Lara’s all I need, a little of Diana is all I see, a little bit of Yukta in the sun, a little bit of Aishwarya is so much fun, a little bit of Sushmita… Oops. Or I could begin again. A little bit of silicone on my side….

How can you have anything against these beauty queens? They have done us all so proud. They have convinced us, to recall Indira Gandhi’s immortal words, that “India can do it”. In a depressing phase in our history when the front pages were full of pictures of dead cattle and dried up wells, of water being carried by trains and of women being lowered into wells to scoop out the last drops, when the Sensex has been losing value in three figures every day and when the Azim Premjis and Narayanmurthys have been looking like losers, we needed an Indian winner or two. Just to lift our spirits.

So what if it happens to be in the business of beauty pageants and no longer in cricket and hockey, or in any other field where competitive achievement has to be a function of something more than a biological accident that gave you endless legs, a midriff to gaze at, a figure to die for. So what if, at the end of the day, after the customary congratulatory call from the Prime Minister, a drive down the avenues of New Delhi waving the tricolour, you are still found wanting at the one marketplace that really matters for the rest of your life. Bollywood prefers its women to also have something on the top. No, not merely in the head, you silly, or Sushmita Sen, who apparently won the Miss Universe title for her beauty and brains wouldn’t have had to seek help elsewhere. If the “world beaters” were to now need a couple of pounds of silicone inserted by cosmetic surgeons where it matters so Bollywood would consider them good enough to dance around the trees, it must put the beauty pageant victories in a differentlight.

Fine, then. We film-going type, cheapy Indians have a different sense of beauty. The world likes them leggy and languorous. We prefer them busty and voluptuous. But that is not the point. We can like them, one way or the other. Adore them. But must we be proud of them as great Indian achievers? If that reasoning is true, what will be the fate of crores of other Indian women who did not inherit genes like Aishwarya Rai’s or Lara Dutta’s? If the length of your legs and the rest were going to be the only determinants of international success and fame for Indian women, wouldn’t it be so awfully cruel to all those not born with those assets? Of course, you have to add a little footnote of apology here to a small, but obviously talented, band of Indian dentists. Many of these Miss this-or-that titles, we are told by all the glossies, are also to be hailed as a great achievement of Indian orthodontics.

This is not the usual liberal argument against beauty contests. Actually, they are wonderful. So are the women who turn up there, sometimes wrapped in swimsuits in the colours of their respective national flags. The problem is that today these are the only women whose international achievements we seem to acknowledge and celebrate. How many of us, for example, remember another woman answering to the second name Dutta, who became the first Indian to win the Mastermind contest? Dayita Dutta did not even get a fraction of the front page space that Lara did. And pictures, forget it. Could she ever be a match for Lara on the seashore, her wrapskirt blowing in the wind?

Beauty pageants are fine and the contestants are great to look at. But how can these little “victories” be hailed as national achievements? Or make nations great? If that were true, Venezuela, which runs a cottage industry producing beauty queens, would have been the greatest nation in the world. In the past, the US and Britain won a few contests. Now, these pageants are not even a blip on the social radar screen of these more successful and prosperous societies where women have a lot more to show for achievements in mainstream fields of activity, in equal competition not merely with other women, irrespective of their anatomical assets, but also with men. The more confident, successful societies see beauty pageants as no more than minor entertainment. But those in the struggling, straggling societies of the Third World and banana republics see these as some kind of ultimate tests of national pride and honour.

We, today, do not have a woman secretary of a major ministry and no woman CEO of a major corporation. No Madeleine Albright, no Rebecca Mark (remember Enron?) and no Charlene Barshefsky, the US trade representative. But we’ve got the Aishwaryas, the Yuktas and the Laras. When was the last time you heard an American, a Briton or a German measure the success of his nation in terms of the performance of its women at Donald Trump’s beauty contests? The last two Miss Americas actually became famous for all the wrong reasons. One for posing inappropriately for Penthouse and the other for hiding a little bit of the past that did not justify the prefix “Miss” to her title. The Japanese, apparently, have never won such a crown and need to do something about it desperately even if the next Japanese contestant has to walk around wearing an “It’s a Sony” sash.

Contrary to what the jholawalas would demand, you don’t have to be embarrassed over your beauty queens. The problem arises when we tend to lose perspective. All that these great achievements bring these women is a crack at the ultimate prize, a place in Bollywood. Of all the Indian beauty queens, the only ones remembered past the next year are those who found work in Hindi films. Aishwarya Rai is now a star, but thanks more to a Subhash Ghai than her Miss World title. Sushmita Sen is still struggling in the B-grade space and is being rapidly forgotten. Diana Hayden? Where is she? Most of the others are only seen on the colour supplement Page 3s, blowing kisses in the party circuit or inaugurating sari shops and slimming centres. If this is all these titles are worth, why do we get so dazzled by them? Of course, on the fateful final day, when they read out well-rehearsed answers to entirely predictable questions meant to establish their cerebral credentials, they mostly promise to carry forward the ideals ofMother Teresa or to work for AIDS awareness and so on. But none has actually even attempted to build fame like that, to become a more complete and durable role model. A beautiful woman of substance. And no one is complaining.

Is that because we, as a nation and society, always tend to set the bar so comfortably low for ourselves? Competing against odds, with the world’s best, we think, is much too difficult. So if, in a population of a billion, we can find a few born with the right attributes, and thereby a short-cut to such success, we are content with that. We watch in awe the so-called judges ask those mocking questions and applaud the nervous, giggling women giving half-witted answers. “See, they may not be geniuses. But they are not dumb, despite being so beautiful,” is our logic. It is so unfair to millions of other beautiful Indian women who do not spend years sculpting their bodies, getting their noses and jawlines fixed and rehearsing dumb answers, but logging real achievements in real lives, real businesses. It is also so unfair to us, a people that, by and large, tend to be so questioning, so sceptical, so demanding of their achievers before acknowledging them as icons.

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