Everyday somebody kindly tells me those five dreaded words nobody wants to hear- 'You have put on weight'. I never know how to respond- with humble gratitude for pointing out something I confront daily in the mirror, with dismay and stern resolutions broken before I even utter them or do I go rabid and froth and foam in the mouth or should I be genteel and sarcastically note that I am still slimmer than them ( strangely the fatties are the first to point out weight gain, must have a nose for it like food, we will come to the ugly buglies later)
and when I reach their size I shall kill myself but until that distant day I can live with this, thank you very much!.Or do I thunder out like a judge that they are dark and fugly (fat and ugly) and bald to boot but without a gavel in my hand I doubt if I can pronounce judgement on others.
I usually find myself blank with dismay partly because, yes, I
have put on weight and my first panicked thought on hearing their comment is "Oh no, they noticed!" and my second thought is "Why are they so nasty?" I am still trying to figure the second one out since I can never make a mean comment to anybody. Oh yes, I think mean comments like a dozen times per second, I tend to pass catty comments well out of earshot and far behind one's back but I will be darned if I go quaking to hell on the charge of making a person feel like shit.
We humans are unique in that we literally size people up and feel free to comment on that size and shape. I am pretty sure that in the animal kingdom when a bald eagle meets another bald eagle it's first comment will definitely
not be " Little thinner on top eh?". Humans have that unique streak of cruelty not found in animals and weight is that sitting duck which makes
anybody fair game.
What perplexes me and let's be honest, vexes me most is that
I am not fat.Yes, I am not as skinny as I was in my teens, definitely not as svelte as in my twenties, certainly a far cry from the hour glass figure of the thirties but dammit I am in my mid-fifties and still have a flat tummy and a head full of hair. Yes, there is more meat on the bones, ( appealing I might point out in some cultures) but why should that be the focal point in any civilized conversation or made out to be a calamity one must deal with immediately?
If weight is the number one bludgeon of choice to beat one on the head with, a close second is the other five word dreaded question in our Indian society -Why isn't your son/daughter married? This question reduced me to a blathering wreck when I had a bachelor son- never mind that I nagged him to death about marriage or kept asking in shriller tones why wouldn't he get married and sniff disdainfully when he said he was waiting for his 'soul mate'.
Such a beautiful answer once you
have married off your son but when asked this question by well meaning friends and relatives I could never come up with an answer that would loosely translate to "Shut the fu#k up!" Like the proverbial deer in the headlights I would freeze, then flounder, all the while in a panic mode thinking "Oh no! why isn't he married, this soul mate stuff is all very well but now these vultures are sniffing out a dead excuse..."
The schadenfreude is worst- you know, that bloody shadow friend who pretends to look out for your best interests at heart while secretly she wants to drive a stake through yours. If they have not already impaled you on the weight issue "You look healthy now (read fat!), you look young ( read plump!) you look nice ( read matronly!) all delivered in that smug, condescending tone that makes you want to make them into a shadow on the ground, they then stick you with the weightier issue- your unmarried progeny!.
But, halleluiah, there is a thing called Karma and it usually bites the bum of the meanest.When my older son was still an eligible bachelor and all our forays into various matrimonial sites only dug up mushrooms even a pig would disdainfully sniff at, one of my schadenfreude buddies kindly told me to "Stop running around in skimpy clothes ( I am a fitness trainer and my short shorts got her goat) and find a wife for your son". And, wouldn't you know, the match of my son's dreams, his 'soul mate' was found when I was in my skimpiest swimsuit and spoke to my swimming buddy about the bride hunt.That my son's wife was beautiful and I sealed the deal half naked made my 'friend' eat crow, sorry chlorine!
Now that I am still a couple of pounds (ok, ok, round it to ten and I refuse to admit to more) overweight and still have another bachelor son to 'marry off' I have decided that Karma is my best ally. And to those five dreaded words aimed like a bazooka at my head and heart I will not shoot my mouth off in return- I shall keep swimming in that skimpy outfit and let Karma do all the talking!
Nimmou Nilakantan
