Mumbai image consultants are charging up to
£1,000 a day to teach etiquette
By Vidhi Doshi
 |
| A session on dining etiquette at Panache image consultants in Mumbai. Photograph: PR |
When Akshay Shah watches his hero – the
suave, quick-witted corporate lawyer Harvey Specter in the US television series
Suits – he says to himself, “Akshay, you should be like him.”
Aged 24, Shah already runs a successful real
estate firm in the Indian financial capital, Mumbai, but something about the
character’s behaviour inspires him. “It is just the way he’s suited up, the way
he speaks, it’s everything,” he says. “I want to be like him, I want that same
confidence.”
Shah felt his own success was incomplete. “My
brother had studied and worked in the UK for three years, and I just felt he
had something that I didn’t have,” he says. “I was successful, but I wasn’t
like other successful people.”
For Shah, European and American manners that
he associated with success were appealing. “The way they eat, the way they
dress, their politeness, I wanted to upgrade myself to be like them,” he says.
Shah is one of hundreds of thousands of
Indians who have taken classes with a new cadre of professional image
consultants who teach the social graces and etiquettes associated with old,
upper-class Europe. While the finishing schools of the 19th and 20th centuries
are now outdated in the west, an industry of manners worth more than 6bn rupees
(£70m) has mushroomed in the east in the last five years, as young, urban
Indians prepare to embark on global careers.
“It was things like having patience, offering
your seat on the bus, or speaking with a good accent,” says Shah. “It’s not
more important than having knowledge in your field, but it gives you an
advantage. It means a client is more likely to ask you to join him for an event
or meeting, because you won’t embarrass him.”
Maya Daswani, who runs Persona Power, a
Mumbai consultancy, says that many of her clients are intimidated when they go
to Europe or America to study or work. “They have the academic and technical
knowledge, they have no problems at all with that. But they lack confidence. I
have one client who went to study at Oxford University. And when she went
there, she found she wasn’t popular. So she came back, and started taking
classes with me to learn how to speak properly, how to make casual conversation,
how to approach people.”
Sessions with consultants include how to
speak in the “right” accent, Titanic-style fine dining, personal grooming and
other “soft skills”. “People do know how to eat with a knife and fork, but
sometimes they use them like daggers,” Daswani says. “Simple things, like how
to pronounce the word ‘comfortable’. Indians emphasise every syllable, and say
‘come-for-table’, and I correct them.”
Clients include schoolchildren, MBA students,
corporate firms, and even housewives, as Indians scramble to adapt to the
globalised world. A single day’s session with a high-end consultant such as
Daswani can be worth up to £1,000. “I have parents literally begging me to take
their children, some as young as three,” she says. “It’s not because there’s
anything wrong with them, it’s just that they want their kids to have an
advantage in life.”
As India emerges as a global power after two
decades of rapid development, even its diplomats sometimes feel out of place at
international events. Many Indians have taken to hiring consultants after
rumours that the prime minister, Narendra Modi, had used them in his journey
from rightwing fringe politician to international leader. “Because of Modi,
many politicians have started taking classes,” says Bijal Mamniya, director of
Panache Image Consultants.
Mamniya recalls one client who came to her
after a holiday in Mauritius. “It was her first trip out of the country, and
she was with all these German and French people. She was vegetarian and didn’t
know how to behave when they served seafood. She went to the beach wearing
jeans, and saw all these Europeans wearing bikinis. She felt so uncomfortable,
she came to me to learn how to fit in.”
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Mamniya continued: “Indians have always
emulated British culture. Britain ruled us, and they still rule us, mentally.
Things are changing but it is still a part and parcel of our life.”
She argues that Indians should be free to
emulate whichever culture inspires them. “If you want to be traditionally
Indian, then that’s fine. But when I go to European countries, I love the way
that they are. Just because I’m Indian, why should I not do that?”
“India has the best culture, and Indians
should be very proud,” says Konkana Bakshi, a former beauty queen and owner of
the Savoir Faire finishing school. “When we see a French woman in India, we
feel so in awe. But they also see our culture as colourful, and exciting. It’s
not just us learning their culture, they also want to learn ours.”
Bakshi argues that Indians should embrace
their own traditions when they go abroad. “Other countries find us exotic,
extravagant and magnanimous with our hospitality.
“European culture is all about subtlety. To
build a relationship, it’s all about finding the right balance.”