Nandita Das' public image as a person of intelligence, beauty and spontaneous charm foregrounds some of the divisions that notions of beauty inflict on us. Between the relentless celebrations of the beauty business and the glib dismissal of beauty being only skin deep, the space for a layered, exploratory conversation is narrow and precarious: a conversation about beauty not as neurosis or oppression, but rather a thing in our lives which is sometimes defining, occasionally in our
control; a fluid thing which we are sometimes suffocated by, sometimes don’t think of at all and occasionally, enjoy – not just in others, but in ourselves.