Every time I watch makeover shows, where make-up artists and dress designers transform a plain Jane into a sexy siren, I remember Apala of the Rig Veda
Every time I watch makeover shows, where make-up artists and dress designers transform a plain Jane into a sexy siren, I remember Apala of the Rig Veda. Apala's story comes in the form of a verse composed at least 4,000 years ago, by the most conservative estimates.
The story goes that Apala was not a very pretty woman. She had been rejected by her husband. She had coarse and ugly skin, a skin disease perhaps. One day, while walking in the woods, she picked up a plant and chewed on it, not realising it was the magical Soma plant. 
The accidental extraction of its juice between her teeth caught the attention of Indra, king of the gods, who loves Soma juice. He appeared before her and offered her a boon. "Make me beautiful," she said.
And so, Indra pulled her through the hole of his chariot wheel three times, causing her coarse skin to slough and she emerged radiant and beautiful, with soft skin. Her sloughed skin turned into a hedgehog, an
alligator and a chameleon, which is why they have coarse skin.
Similar stories of physical transformation occur in Puranic myths that were written almost 3,000 years after the Rig Veda. In one story, Shiva laughs at Shakti because she is dark or Kali. So, the goddess bathes in the river Yamuna and emerges radiant, and comes to be known as Gauri, the fair one.
The river acquires the dark complexion of the goddess and so comes to be known as Kalindi. In the Bhagavata Purana, the ugly bent woman Trivikra is touched by Krishna who straightens her back and makes her beautiful.
While the transformation of ugliness into beauty brings about erotic and household bliss, the transformation of beauty into ugliness is seen as critical for spiritual bliss. Thus, there is the story of Karaikal Ammaiyar, a Tamil saint, who makes herself ugly so that she does not have to contend with the lustful desires of her husband and other men, and can focus on her devotion to Shiva.
In the Puranas, Shiva is described as a handsome god, who smears his body with ash so that people realise that more valuable than the body is the soul within the body.
There is a clear shift in attitudes towards body from Rig Vedic times to the Puranic period. In the Rig Veda, the body and its beauty and fertility are celebrated. In later times, this celebration was balanced by a reminder of the mortality of flesh and the limitations of desire.
The monastic ideal did not find much favour in Rig Veda but it did become prominent in later times, perhaps because the obsession for beauty became excessive and dangerous. Makes me wonder what the state of affairs is today.
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The author is Chief Belief Officer of the Future Group, and can be reached at devdutt@devdutt.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.
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