APROPOS of Aradhika Sekhon’s write up "Looking good is not looking thin" (November 18), it is true that in the past few years, our obsession with our bodies has become pronounced. With beauty pageants having become a way of life, our fixation with what is perceived as ‘fitness’ has, to say the least, become a nightmarish reality. But in reality does fitness really enter the picture? Does being to twig-thin mean being hale and hearty?

It is not surprising that with an overemphasis on trying to acquire a thin and frail body, certain serious mental and physical problems have cropped up — ailments such as anorexia and bulimia. These diseases are the outcome of an anti-fat society where figure control ensures control of life at various levels. People who suffer from these eating disorders have a frail or even no self-esteem and genuinely believe themselves to be fat.

Has everything really become so cosmetic? And what about whole industries that exist and thrive only because of slick advertisements that brain wash us to believe that beauty and success go hand in hand and the first step is taken by going in for a thin and slim body? Aren’t such messages nurturing our insecurities? And since these ailments are imported from the West, wouldn’t it be more wholesome, in our own interest, if we would not mimic this western culture down to the very last breath.

K.M. VASHISHT
Mansa

II

The article presented an interesting chronicle of the accepted standards of beauty in different eras. Those of us who are in their 40s today had Hema Malini, Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi as models in our heydays who, instead of being reed-thin, were well- endowed beauties.

Having waited eagerly for my forties when I would feel comfortable in my plump, tyred, matron-like complacent looks, making a loud and clear statement of a healthy and contended married life, I have to face harsh reality today. I have to follow the diktat of my two teenaged daughters who look scornfully at me for being unfaithful to the cause of ‘looking good is looking thin’.

Please leave us out of this mad race to look pencil thin and have the grace to accept us as we are.

SAROJ THAKUR
Hamirpur

III

Thin and slim bodies are great for showing-off in jeans, shorts and biknis, while fat ones are for concealing in folds of saris.

Princess Diana was a known bulimic. In the USSR, women who produced ten children were honoured with the title of ‘Heroine Mother’. They could not possible be thin.

Surprisingly children feel more secure with fat mothers than slims ones.

ROSHNI JOHAR
Shimla

IV

One misses the era of the 50s and 60s when the heroines’ claim to beauty was not their bodies but their faces, emotive eyes, sharp noses and long hair. They held the film-goers spellbound. It is pity that modern girls now have role models who emphasise weight and shape without a thought for what is healthy, feminine and desirable. For them looking good means looking thin and to get that look they are constantly under pressure to starve and in the process are becoming victims of eating disorders and anxiety. The modern generation of women in India must appreciate that it’s one’s ‘inner beauty’ which ultimately determines one stature as a human-being.

ONKAR CHOPRA
New Delhi

Urdu poetry

In his write-up "Dancing dervish" ("This above all", November 11), Khushwant Singh has observed that the first choice of poets from Amir Khusrao, Mir Taqi Mir, Ghalib down to Allama Iqbal was Persian, but they switched over to Urdu, so that "the man in the street" could understand their compositions. It is not correct.

Amir Khusrao was a purely Persian poet. However, he wrote some dohas (couplets), kaih-mukarnes (assertion-denial riddles based on double entendres), second hemistiches of some couplets of a couple of Persian ghazals in Braj Bhasha. Urdu had not come into being in his time.

Mir Taqi Mir was primarily a prolific Urdu poet, although he wrote many verses in Persian. HisUrdu verses are in inimitably easy style and free from extravagant verbal padding. These immediately find a response in the heart of the reader.

It is clear from Ghalib’s writings that he started couching verses in Urdu much before he turned to Persian. He was about nine, when he wrote an Urdu masnavi (a verse genre) on kite-flying. However, as quite a number of his Urdu verses were in orotund style, not to speak of "the man in the street", even many learned people could not understand and enjoy the same.

Iqbal also started writing poetry in Urdu. His mentor was a famous Urdu poet, Daagh Dehlavi.

All famous poets from Ghalib down to Iqbal, namely Ameer Meenaai, Daagh, Jalaal, Dabeer, Anees, Haali, Saroor, Akbar Allahabadi, Shaad Azeemabadi, Chakhbast, Azeez Lakhnavi, etc. wrote verses in Urdu alone and Persian was never their first choice.

BHAGWAN SINGH
Qadian