What's new about cosmetic surgery is, its current popular image. No longer are nose jobs and tummy tucks a preserve of the affluent set or the glamour professions. Today, not just movie stars and top-drawer models, but also company executives, housewives and college students see the aesthetic ideal as one worth pursuing without apology or guilt.

In India, the process has been nudged along by several specific social trends. A totally different kind of impetus has come from the promise and possibilities held out by the burgeoning glamour industry. Thus, the series of Indian triumphs on the international beauty stage in recent years has proved to be a major fillip as thousands of want to-be queens look to cosmetic surgeons to create for them those 'winning' looks and figures. Cosmetic surgery is not exactly a 20th century vanity. Although many of its innovations are the product of only the last two decades, as a field of medical practice cosmetic surgery dates far, far back - to the times of the Indian surgical wiz, Sushruta, in fact. That's the fifth century B.C. and the Sushrut Samhita tells how he used a flap of skin from the cheek and forehead to restructure a nose lost through accident or punishment.