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Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline’ is an advertising tagline I have always admired. Wordplay aside, it beautifully captures the promise that Maybelline’s beautifying effect is so seamless that beholders are left wondering if your beauty is all-natural and genetically bestowed, or skilfully enhanced by human artifice.

- ANUJA CHAUHAN

It’s a bit like cricket outcomes in the 1990s. Dazzled and delirious after an unexpected India victory, we could never be sure if we had actually won the match, or, if Pakistan or South Africa had thrown it. Basically: maybe it is a miracle, maybe it is match fixing.

In the 2020s, more than ever, we live in a tainted world where nothing is quite what it seems. AI-tweaked videos proliferate online. Successful actors, like Janhvi Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao, now admit, matter-of-factly and without shame, to having had a “little bit of work done”. Everywhere we look, things are subtly spiked, digitally enhanced, or genetically modified like the corn and soya bean the US is keen on selling in India.

Itna toh chalta hai [this is acceptable] seems to be the general verdict. We are all breezily ‘no judgment’ and ‘hey, if it floats your boat’.