THE PAGE 3 PEOPLE OF CHENNAI

Page 3 

Page 3 is where the English Tabloids put all the interesting stuff. The idea is, after seeing all the depressing news about wars, deaths, political and diplomatic fiascos, riots, inflation, deflation, being part of Europe, not being part of Europe, etc you need to quickly get your blood racing so that you can face the day as an honest British factory worker turning out cars, steel, planes and the like. It is a different matter that the only thing British factories are turning out these days are their employees. The idea very well understood by the British Tabloid press was that the reader needed a quick pick-me-up after reading the first page replete with bad and depressing news. So they created The Page Three. I don’t know when exactly this started, but the concept was already well-established when I reached their cold, dank and depressing shores in the Eighties. After a cold journey to work, buffeted on the way by gale-force winds, rain and sleet, a quick glance at Samantha Fox, Linda Lusardi et al in all their pneumatic glory on page three warmed me up for the day. Thus fortified, I never looked back the rest of the day.

The Indian page three is of a more recent origin and pioneered by Times of India in Mumbai. In fact this respected paper created an entire supplement for this purpose instead of just page 3. As icing on the cake, the page 3 of the Page Three supplement (somewhat innocuously titled Mumbai Times) contained pictures of movers and shakers moving and shaking. Its denizens however are pneumatically challenged to be spoken of in the same sentence as aforementioned Ms.Lusardi and Ms.Fox. But the movers and shakers who inhabit Mumbai Times page 3 are generally good looking (not just in comparison to Ms Lusardi & co) while being differently abled. While from time to time some appear whose faces resemble London’s famed Routemaster buses, mostly they are pretty. Notwithstanding some dark mutterings about instances of stealing husbands / boyfriends of fellow page 3 denizens, their lives are generally conducted on what would be described in Chennai as “acceptable” basis. They all have two names: a first name and a surname. That goes for men too. There are some who prefer single names, one of which is with an obvious reference to royalty which is probably more in the mistaken hope of royal attachment than any real royal connection. That their “designer” clothes are designed by their own brothers/sisters/cousins or friends’ brothers, sisters, cousins is neither here nor there. By and large the page 3 “hotties” as the current slang has it are easy on the eye.

In Chennai we too have page 3.  We did not invent it but we are catching up fast. We don’t conform to Western or Northern ideas of what is beauty and what isn’t – we have our own. After all we gave the world  Silk Smitha celebrated in the pruriently named movie “Dirty Picture” - albeit with a not too substantial woman in the lead which is a bit of a betrayal of the original concept, but you can’t trust these Bollywood types to stay true to the original. Chennai legs may not go on forever as Jethro Tull fantasized in “Budapest”, but we gave the world the concept of “thunder thighs”. So it is natural that this is the sensibility that informs our page 3.Our Jebin, Jenaan, Linita, Vimmi, Shilka et al  are clearly establishing new paradigms of page 3 beauty. They also  have developed a strong sense of sisterhood and do not steal husbands and boyfriends and live very moral lives. They even go to temples regularly and dress up for Margazhi music festivals.

They waste no opportunity to tell the world of their strong sorority bonds. Which is why the preferred pose for photographs is one resembling conjoined twins joined at the hip. Any salacious conclusions are the result of grotesquely immoral minds.