Another Jab, Darling?

Botox injections are the hottest items at the happeningest parties.

RENUKA ARYA, P3 personal-ity, is all keyed up for her party on coming Friday night. Whispering invitations on her very latest cellphone, she can8217;t wait to let her streaked hair down at the do she8217;s been organising for weeks. On the menu are wine and cheese, champagne and canapeacute;8230; and, hold your breath, for the main course, Renuka8217;s called in a doctor to administer botox injections to her friends!

Girls just wanna have fun has ac-quired yet another twist in Metro India 2006. And botox parties are real revelry for some women today. Had you been even a mildly in-terested observer of Female Social-ising Habits, you8217;d know of kitty parties, have heard of mehendi dos, read about Tupperware get-togeth-ers, and, lately, gaped at television images of celeb type women throw-ing pedicure parties.

But botox parties? Yes. Where, apart from the regular drinking, dancing and air kissing, the rich are getting themselves injected with the new-age elixir of youth called botox. All you need to do is sign a consent form, sometimes not even that, and, voila, you are ready to defy age for four to six months, after which you need the needle again.

For the uninitiated, botox is de-rived from the bacteria clostridium botulinum, which, when injected under the eyes or forehead, tem-porarily paralyses the muscles and thus tautens skin. And women of means are increasingly falling for botox. The parties also make eco-nomic sense: a phial which costs Rs 20-30,000, depending on the make, for 100 units, can be used on four or five persons, so the invitees share the cost with the host. If you went to a salon to get yourself botoxed, you8217;d be billed Rs 8,000-10,000 for frown lines and forehead; and Rs 4,000-5,000 more for laugh lines and crow8217;s feet.

But however compelling the eco-nomic or aesthetic reasons, botox injections are a serious medical process. That8217;s why these soirees are so hush-hush. Says Dr Rashmi Taneja of the department of plastic surgery at Delhi8217;s Ganga Ram Hospi-tal: 8220;Off and on, I8217;ve got offers for such parties, but it8217;s against medical ethics, so I have declined.8221; Dr Snehal Sriram at Kaya Skin Clinic confirms the trend: 8220;We did get a lot of offers for botox parties, but we do not endorse it.8221; The be-fore- and-after instructions have to be followed to a T, or you risk seri-ous side effects. For example, you shouldn8217;t mix it with alcohol.

Kaya has its own variation on the party theme: women and doctors get together in an informal atmos- phere, refreshments are passed around, and one participant gets a free demo shot. Last October, the clinic roped in Pooja Bedi as brand ambassador, to up the glam quo-tient of its workshops and spread the good word.

Taneja has been nudging would-be partiers to take the injections in a supervised manner: 8220;This lady re-quested me to attend her party, but I convinced her to come over to my clinic, so she and her friends could take the shots in a surgical environ-ment.8221; So, when you get that invite, proceed with care.