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Recently a friend was awaiting her turn in a swank hair-dressing salon where the rich and famous in Delhi go. The bottle blonde Punjabi lady from Mumbai, who my friend’s favourite hair dresser was servicing, kept tilting her hair this way and that, pleased as punch with the way her luxuriant mane swayed. Like those ads for volume-enhancing shampoos in which the model’s computerised hair cascades down her back like Niagara Falls.

Finally, as my friend sat down, the celebrity scissor-hands let out a deep sigh. “I’m exhausted. She keeps on getting extension after extension, and the plugs keep coming out when I style her hair.”

That magnificent mane of our desi living Barbie doll was not only all maya (what you see is not what you get), it caused all kinds of problems when she walked out. In her wake she left behind clumps of the clipped on or plugged in hair: parts of her scalp under those plugs had begun to resemble a desert.

Hair as we all know is a vital accessory. There’s a sexual air about it. While in some parts of the Islamic world a woman’s hair has to go undercover because it is “electric” (in other words it can make men go crazy), in many traditional Hindu households a woman leaving her hair open and wild was just not done. It sent out the wrong signals. Hence, the ghungat and the braid or the bun.

Today, in much of the globalised world where celebrities set the templates, big hair for a woman has to do with power and sexuality. A powerful motorcycle might do just that for a macho male, along with of course some hair-weaving as we can observe on the freshly sprouted hair of our male film stars. I digress. This column is not about just hair but about the increasing obsession with beauty and youth — both to be had at any cost.

Age is a mere fly that has to be swatted and thrown out, and beauty is something to be bought over the counter. Just a few years into her 30s, our plugged-in socialite in the beauty parlour also had deep cuts behind her ears, where all the sagging flesh had been sucked out.

You often hear of young men and women, many barely out of their teens, buying anti-wrinkle creams. Or, getting botoxed. There are even botox parties when you do it en masse while you chat and nibble: please pass me the botox rather than pass the nuts. Some health spas have visiting doctors dropping in with their vials of this millennium elixir of life while the women are in the midst of massages and aromatherapy.

Nip n’ tuck is the motto of the day. You could say that a knife is set to replace the diamond as a girl’s best friend — perhaps, eventually, a man’s best friend too. An acquaintance in her mid-50s suddenly decided to downsize her stomach and her breasts. She is planning to go to Goa for Christmas and wants to frolic on its beaches in her maiden bikini. She took along her good friend — just as many Americans seem to be doing — for a nip a deux. A new combo: chat and snip. At least the two are still alive, unlike some of the anorexic models who seem to be dying of eating disorders.

All this frenzy to lock up time, to capture the “sweet bird of youth” reminds me of the deliciously black comedy Death Becomes Her.

The film spoofs America’s obsession with youth and vanity. Set in the world of the Beautiful People who inhabit Beverly Hills, it has the marvellous Meryl Streep playing an over-the-hill actress, and Goldie Hawn plays a writer.

The two of them claw it out over the plastic surgeon (ex-fiancé of the latter and husband of the former) just so that he can keep creeping wrinkles at bay. The two have also paid through their noses for an elixir that gives them immortality and youth, with devastating results: in one of the scenes the two women literally seem to be coming apart. Almost like our desi with the Rapunzel hair and regularly pulled-up face shedding her tresses.

The power of beauty and youth has not been lost on Indian men. Dev Anand is a walking example. Narcissism is contagious: our politicos and jail inmates are not immune. The other day a jailed MLA from the Lok Janshakti Party, Rajen Tiwari, was caught on camera coming out of a beauty parlour. Tiwari was returning to Tihar Jail after a court appearance and could not resist the call of beauty. So, he got “beautified” while his police escorts waited. They understood his need.

Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com