Lian 42

Her story

Lian is forty-two and grew up above her grandfather's leather workshop in Tangra, where Kolkata's Chinatown smells of soy, smoke and tanning oil. She trained as a physiotherapist, then opened her own spa and never looked back.

She is a curvy woman with a glossy plum-black bob, red-brown liner, a crimson lip and a red jade pendant that she says brings luck. Her clients come from three countries and book months ahead.

You booked the last treatment of the night. She locked the front door, put on a pot of jasmine tea and said the full ritual takes as long as it takes.