The other side of Iran

Like most people, I imagined Iran to be something of a police state — fortress-like and impermeable to visitors. Actually, getting in was shockingly easy. Along with other tourist paradises like Thailand and the Maldives, Iran offers its Indian visitors a visa on arrival, for a maximum stay of 14 days. (This process now requires pre-approval before travel from India).

The procedure at Tehran airport was easy. The trouble was in Mumbai, where immigration officials were stumped by the concept and had to look up their guidebooks, and then call their supervisors, before letting me through.

We all love a good brand
While shopping for friends and relatives in Iran, I had agonised over whether I should buy American — or actually, any — branded goods. What if they spat on the Adidas T-shirts I took along? What if the only use they had for Nike sneakers was to fling them at visiting heads of state?  Turned out that here, like most places, young people were happy to guzzle down copious amount of Coke while strolling the malls of Tehran dressed in elegant Gucci and Gap outfits, or knockoffs so good they had me fooled. I was happy I gave those branded goods a miss. You get them cheaper in Tehran.

From head to nose
From images on the news, I had expected the streets of Tehran to be a sea of black veils and beards. The reality turned out to be quite different.  Wearing the chador (the all-enveloping veil) is compulsory only inside mosques, and most girls make do with long coats and headscarves, with strands of hair artfully arranged to peep out. What there is an abundance of are nose plasters — white sticky coverings that can be seen on every kind of face, from cleaning ladies to snooty socialites staring down their (plastered) noses.

Plastic surgeries are cheap in Iran, and with doctors offering nose jobs at (pardon the pun) knock-off prices, most women go in for at least one, with the plaster providing a discreet space for recovery. And minor fixes like Botox are reportedly set up in beauty parlours with routine treatments like waxing and eyebrow-threading. Small wonder that it is a rare (and brave/foolish, take your pick) woman who looks her real age.

A thousand splendid doves
The idea of public art is still something of a novelty in Mumbai. But in Tehran it seems to have been around for years. The city is full of flashes of colour, with the sides of buildings, intersections and even skywalks decorated with murals and large paintings. These are not just the usual images of martyrs and the Ayatollah, but some incredible graffiti-style art. At one construction site, I saw the corrugated metal sidings used to cover the pit painted over with brightly coloured doves. This seems to be one part of the Iranian aesthetic that would fit right into Mumbai, with its abundance of eyesores at construction sites just waiting to be painted over.

Minority report
The Jewish community in Iran is almost 3000 years old, and in Tehran itself there are around a dozen synagogues. Among the tourist spots I visited, were Armenian churches, charming and well-preserved, on the edges of Tehran. Iranians seem to have taken care to preserve their pre-Islamic past, with none of the vandalism of the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan statues on display here. Icons from Iran’s pre-Islamic era are everywhere, from museums to chocolate boxes.

Hearts, minds and chests
Having watched a number of arthouse Iranian films, I expected popular entertainment to hover around that marker. But popular films are potboilers like they are in Mumbai, and TV draws a huge audience for its  —  you guessed it  —  family soaps and religious epics. The plot of one show, Musafir az Hind (Traveller from India), revolves around an Indian bride who sets right the troubles of her Iranian sasural. Bollywood dance classes are all the rage. In the street markets, Shah Rukh Khan grins from T-shirts, and DVDs of pirated, dubbed Indian blockbusters do brisk business. While watching Sunny Deol spew abuses in Persian is definitely bizarre, it is comforting to know that Bollywood
continues to win the battle for the hearts and minds of Iranians.