She peers down with squinty eyes at her weighing scale. She adjusts her pre-breakfast body—she tilts her love handles to the left, then to the right, so that the weight displayed in numbers that appears on the electronic screen will put her in a good mood. The magical number that will let her cook, clean, and teach math to her kindergarten class while floating on a fluffy, white cloud all day.
She grimaces and steps down, arms crossed across her chest, shoulders hunched. Four pounds above her normal weight since the holiday season ended. She groans as she thinks of all the celebrations still to come. Valentine’s Day, Holi, St. Patrick’s Day, Baisakhi, school graduations. At this rate, she won’t be able to fit into her size eight dresses this season or the next.
It’s a continuing battle. The Atkins diet, the Paleo diet, the South Beach diet, Keto, Intermittent fasting, herbal digestive enzymes, Bulletproof Coffee. She’s done it all. A few pounds gained, and she can see her friends’ eyes widen, their gaze sliding over her ballooning upper arms encased in long-sleeved blouses, her outfit of choice—a shapeless shift. Instead of the usual, “You look good. You haven’t changed a bit,” they pat her shoulder, and murmur in comforting voices, “It’s just menopause. It’ll pass.”
She grins sheepishly as she inhales a deep, Pranayama breath. Maybe it is menopause or aging or the way the moon waxes and wanes this quarter. For as long as she can remember, she’s had a complicated relationship with food. As prickly and tortured as the one with her mother. Growing up in New Delhi, she was the cute, plump kid paraded in front of Dolly Aunty and Lovely Aunty as she twirled in the pretty little-girl frocks that Daddy brought for her from his overseas trips to Hong Kong and Singapore.
Come puberty and the rolls of fat on her emerging female body were called cellulite, to be hidden from public view until the extra pounds were shed. Life in the fat lane was no fun. “Put the gulab jamun down,” was a refrain she heard incessantly. Remember those fifteen minutes in the 90s when everyone wanted to be thin, fit and gorgeous. Being a woman of the post baby-boomer generation almost definitely means hating at least part of your body, if not all of it. She sighs. The millennials are the generation of body diversity, she muses. Yet, thirty years later, she’s still to adopt the “love your body” mantra her twenty-year-old daughter lives by.
She glances over to the adjoining sink where her husband in engaged in his daily ritual of shaving. He whistles cheerfully as his pot-belled frame swings into view. He catches her looking at his widening stomach, and he pats his belly gently, “Made with love, huh? Handle with care, “ he admonishes, throwing her a playful leer.
“Maybe I will have the second helping of halwa with ghee and raisins today.” She pushes the electric toothbrush back into the socket and looks away from the mirror. “Maybe it’s time to get rid of my obsessive need to be admired.”
