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SCMP Reporter

Beauty clinics for men and women are the latest fitness fad among the 250 million people in the upwardly aspiring middle class.

  Newspapers and magazines are crammed with advertising promising various kinds of instant transformations.

  'Unbelievable change in just two or three hours,' announces one advertisement.

  'Scientific slimming. 15-day course. Reduce up to seven kilograms,' screams another.

  'Remove pimples, scars and pigmentation through latest European technique with visible results on the very first day,' promises a third.

  More and more people, taken in by promises of sudden beauty and weight loss, are giving these clinics a steady stream of business.

  'My face is my fortune,' says Meera Varghese, 24, who has just undergone a body-shaping and face improvement course.

  'It has been an expensive two weeks but it was well worth it. I feel and look a great deal better.'   Ms Varghese says she has been through a 'sound-gel treatment' to firm up facial skin, particularly to remove wrinkles and dark shadows around the eyes. She works as a model and TV actress.

  She was accompanied by 23-year-old Umesh Shetty, an airline steward.

   'Who says only women are interested in looking good?' Mr Shetty says. 'In my line of work, it is equally important to be the best that I can.'   He has recently undergone weight-reduction therapies and a hair-weaving treatment billed as a 'state-of-the-art cure for baldness'.

  He is not entirely satisfied with the hair-weaving. Ten days after the treatment his 'hairline has receded to its original level.'   Silken Beauty's Dr Shafique Pathan says his patients include 'cardiologists, heart surgeons, dental surgeons, general practitioners, journalists, politicians and people from all walks of life'.

  His special diet provides patients with pills that are 'yet to receive a single complaint of any side-effect'. He says his clients lose a kilogram a week until they reach their desired weight.

  A Bangalore lawyer said: 'Since India has no tradition of malpractice suits against doctors, these clinics will flourish until everybody realises they are being taken for a long ride. Meanwhile, the sky's the limit.' 



Beauty clinics sitting pretty