Postman News Latest News, Live Breaking News, Today News …
Related Articles
JOAN COLLINS famously said the problem with beauty is that it’s like being born rich and getting poorer. Bollywood remains B-town India’s fantastic self image. So while a teenybopper in Raipur may not have heard of Heidi Montag’s multiple surgeries: you can bet your nose she’s discussed Janvi Kapoor ever-changing face.
Dr Sunil Kalda from Raipur, Chhattisgarh, with a humble beginning of developing plastic surgery since 1990 and now one of the most renowned Plastic Surgeons of Central India recounts many such instances: “A patient came with 200 photos of Aishwarya Rai’s nose. I don’t even know how she got hold of so many pictures, but she had one from every pose and angle. She wanted a nose exactly like that.”
Raipur’s concerns echo out endlessly through India’s B-towns. Beauty: however: is only a subset of the desire to belong. Indians aren’t just looking for better looking noses. Jackson, a 20year-old model from Shillong is considered the infamous eyelid reconstructive surgery that widened his eyes and permanently set him apart from his small-eyed parents and cousins. Ask him why and he says matter-of-fact: The way I look is my bread and butter. The fact is that very few north-easterners make it as models— it’s hard because we look different.
Most commonly; Chhattisgarh being a developing state, Sr. Sunil Kalda have been treating tribal patients who ask’s for their eyes to be widened and for their typically flat noses to be sharpened (they say prospective grooms’ families complain that in places like Bastar and Kotoriya girls look too ‘sleepy’ or ‘chinks’). Women want breast augmentation, men want hair transplants, and both want liposuctions and tummy tucks. Across India, plastic surgery is begetting its own world of plastic people. The ‘mainstream’ is not about the common denominator anymore. Its about Perfection.
Dr Kalda in his 30 years old Hospital gladly shows off a montage of Bollywood belly buttons that he offers his patients. There are also of course: skin lightening chemical peels and fairness laser treatments. Like everywhere else in the world, plastic surgery is the sharpest expression of a desire to forget your past. In Raipur most requests for tattoo removals come from upwardly mobile Tribals who -want to assimilate, who want their village names erased from their bodies.
Wrinkles: deposits of fat or unwanted hair are enough to cause severe depression among patients: say doctors. Given the filters we now put on how we look: its no surprise that patients feel plastic surgery is almost like sorcery — “Usually: no psychological therapy is necessary because patients need only look into a mirror post- operation to feel like a new person. I would be surprised at how even something as basic as their walk changes after getting a new nose or lighter skin:” agrees Dr KALDA. He refuses to touch patients who expect miracles. “You have to be realistic:” he says.
When young girls bring me a picture of Katrina Kaif: asking for total body contouring to look like her I have to say no — because there is no humanly possible way to satisfy such a demand. These are cases of body dysmorphia. These patients need counselling, not surgery- To most surgeons, though: the need for surgery is directly proportional to the patient’s desire. Take Dr Kalda who expounds in paternal cadences: “You can’t say that someone with a snub nose needs surgery less than someone with a birth defect. To someone who thinks their nose is ugly: even a functional body part can be crippling to their lives and confidence.”
Dr. Kalda has conducted over 200 free camps in the remote and hard-to-reach Naxal-affected areas of Chhattisgarh. He has received numerous accolades, including the “Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh Samman,” “Dr. B C Roy Award,” “Vihan Samman,” “Emerging Chhattisgarh,” and “Gaurav Award Mumbai.
