It isn’t the whistle that pulls the train, you know. It is the steam.

Talking of optical illusions, someone told me that Sridevi has lost so much weight, especially on her waist, that it looks like she’s done a boob job. But why would she do that, now, at this age and time in her life?! “They look ominously big and out of proportion suddenly! A bit like Dolly Parton.” Well!!! It’s possibly just optical trickery, the thinner waist making the bosom look bigger…or may be, like she used to in her good ole HIMMATWALA days, Sri still stuffs them up.

Silicone implants happened to our film industry long after Thunder Thighs descended on us. Sushmita Sen was the first actress to go to town with her breast implants and since then it’s sort of blown out of proportions! Liposuctions, nose jobs, cheek jobs, tummy tucks, face lifts, skin peels, laser scrubs, contouring, sculpting, etc, etc. There are as many horror stories as well. Pretty-looking faces turning grotesque overnight! Botox is paralysing even the tiny traces of expression we occasionally got to see on some of these actresses’ faces. Some of them actually look like their own wax replicas. I don’t think there is any actor, male or female, who hasn’t done ‘corrections’. Lips and Jaws seem to be the latest obsession in town. A month-long holiday to some unknown foreign destination and suddenly you find them stepping down the Mumbai airport with swollen lips and painfully stretched, razor-edged jaw lines. I hope they can chew their food, poor things.

In 1947, when Kedar Sharma introduced fourteen-year-old Madhubala along with the nineteen-year-old Raj Kapoor in NEEL KAMAL, he apparently asked the under-developed teenager to tuck some coconut shells into her blouse. Ouch! That must hurt!

Enhancement is a big part of show business, no doubt. But it isn’t the whistle that pulls the train, you know. It is the steam. I mean, wear stilettos by all means but don’t get so tall on me that I start wondering if you have a face at all! Finally, you know, there’s a big difference between a beautiful actress and one who acts beautifully. A balance between the two would not be such a bad idea either.