Living up to the image

My friend and I are dining at an upscale restaurant in Park Street, Kolkata. We have a lot to catch up on, but neither or us are ravenous hungry. So we order soups, appetizers, and drinks. Hours later, the person attending to us, polite and well-dressed and so far attentive to our needs, asks us if we are ready to order the main course. As we are very full, we politely decline, asking for the check/bill instead. At this point, our man laughs loudly and asks us, "Oh, are you dieting?"

A seemingly lame attempt to make small talk although an innocuous question, right? Wrong. Context is always important. Would he ever ask this to his male guests? Not only it is none of his business, questions about food, dieting, clothes, etc. are deeply tied to body image. I am tired of every friend and relative in Kolkata, male and female, commenting on how I look, how much better I used to look in the past, and how I must do certain things to make sure I go back to looking my older self again. These people are no brand ambassadors of good looks and fit lifestyles themselves, although I see them as people and not as balding people, pot-bellied people, smoking people, unfit people, or obese people. These people have no curiosity about my life other than my looks- nothing about where I work, what I do for a living, what I think of some of the pressing issues in the country, and so on. And now, this comment about dieting comes from a complete stranger, a person whose job was to serve us food. Because women are supposed to diet and look pretty and deck up and please others according to set societal norms. And women are either too thin or too fat or too dark or too bold.

Inadvertently or otherwise, stop reinforcing gender stereotypes, or any stereotype for that matter. It is not cool!

sunshine

Funny things said and heard

Five funny things said and heard during this trip:

M: Are you hiking in Seattle this time?

sunshine: Just from my room on the 2nd floor to the kitchen on the 1st floor at night, and back. This is when I stay up late and work and get very hungry. And you?

M: I am climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on my 50th birthday.

Respect!

At the store, while trying out a poncho that totally hid my hands, I looked at the mirror and remarked to myself a little loudly, "Boy, I so look like Sanjeev Kumar in Sholay."

"What did you say?", screamed a familiar voice in a shrill pitch from the other aisle. It was G’s voice, "Sanjeev Kapoor is making Cholay? Where?"

Being hard of hearing is one of those things I still haven't thought would afflict me or my friends someday. It's all in the package of getting older. And it's definitely coming soon.

One evening, G complimented me on my writing. 

"You write very well. I thoroughly enjoy reading what you write. It's totally not like Jhumpa Lahiri material. It's not poetic and not like a novel. There is no language intricacy. You know, novels are written in a certain way. The story builds up. The reader anticipates about what will happen next. Your writings are so simple, about such basic events. There is nothing to anticipate. Anyone would understand it."

Me: Umm... So what part of your long speech was a compliment? 

G's "compliment" reminded me of what my mom said once. "You write so well, you should author a book. In fact, you write so well that half of the time, I do not even understand what you are writing."

Once in a while, I get into these face-palm moments where I try to say something totally smart-ass, and things backfire, leaving me with no choice but to laugh at my stupidity. 

I meet a friend in Seattle after 6 long years, and go out for dinner with him. We are having a lovely time, catching up after so many years. He asks me more about my work, and so do I.

"So where do you work now?", I ask, genuinely interested.

"Skype", he says.

"Great! Great to meet someone in Seattle who doesn't work for Microsoft!", I say, all confidently. 

His expression was priceless. And so was mine. 

Heard the weirdest mother-daughter conversation:

"Remember, Lord Vishnu is watching you. If you don't drink milk and don't practice music daily, he will go and complain to the tooth fairy."

Who knew Lord Vishnu and the tooth fairy all knew each other?

sunshine

Statistical Faux Pas

Another of those 3-hour long statistics classes, the second one since morning. I was already losing focus, and I logged on to my email. My friend had just delivered, and she had sent me a cute picture of the baby. For a while, I zoned out of what the professor was teaching, the statistical data handling and output. I looked at the baby’s picture, wearing a nice little froggy dress, smiling cutely. I wanted to comment on the baby’s cute outfit. I wanted to write, “Nice outfit”.

All I ended up typing absentmindedly was, “Nice output”.

[As recounted by a friend in class today, after which, both of us rolled on the floor laughing. Nice output of a baby? How statistically apt!!].

sunshine

A Big Fat-(free) Lie

At some point of my life, roughly 83 hours and 52 minutes ago, I got tired of hogging on all the Rasgulla, Gulab Jamuns, Rabri, and all those deep fried masses of sugars and calories. Nothing triggered it, it just happened. I guess it’s like giving up on smoking (or getting rid of that loser of a boyfriend you should have left 5 years ago). You have been thinking of doing it for a while, and every time you try, you just fail. Then one fine morning, you wake up and just do it. I think the same happened to me. I have been unhappy with the way I have put on weight for the last few years. From being a person who jumped at the center of the screen whenever I spotted a camera, now I started shying away from the camera, finding a comfort spot behind somebody so that my paunch was hiding. Paunch I could still hide wearing appropriate clothes, but where would I hide my face, a big round blob of fat now with chubby cheeks? It’s been years since I’ve seen my face oval, the original way God designed it. Anyway I will rant about my body and looks some other time (I promise I will). I will not spare you, I will even rant about my huge biceps, till you are bored to death. Anyway.

So one fine day I just decided to give up on the empty calories. This was the least I could do, since I wasn’t committed to gymming and working out big time. The mangoes looked at me from the fridge expectantly and I looked back at the mangoes with pain. The neighbor who makes awesome “Patisaptas” (sweet crepes stuffed with coconut and jaggery and sometimes condensed milk filling) was promptly asked not to make those for my goodbye dinner in 5 days. Convincing mother wasn’t a problem since she has always been after me to lose weight, but convincing neighbors and relatives who believe in increasing their good karma by stuffing another Rasgulla into your mouth became a big problem. I turned down two dinner invitations feigning a stomach ache because it is futile to argue and explain to these people why I will not hog on the coconut cream based prawns, the deep fried potato tikkis, and the four courses of dessert following a five course dinner. Not that I have slimmed down overnight, but I still intended to stick to my decision of not eating rubbish.

So I went to visit my ex-student’s place. I taught her Math for 4 years and though she sucked at Math, we became great friends. Ironically I was the one who told her that Math isn’t everything in life, but as long as she studies it, she should do it well. I go visit my student after 4 years, and aunty (her mom) gets me a huge brown chocolate pastry and a tall glass of chilled iced tea. Poor aunty is familiar with my eating habits four years ago when I used to religiously devour every sweet she put on my plate (I don’t just have A sweet tooth, my entire dentition is sweet !!). Today I had already reached the stage when I was having sugar withdrawal symptoms, a little dizziness in my head and a very irritable temper caused by it. Not that I was starving or dieting, I just decided not to hog on high-calorie, low-nutrient stuff.

My plea of neither touching the chocolate pastry nor the iced tea fell on deaf ears. I promised I was more than happy sipping on a glass of cold water, but she wouldn’t understand. I tried reasoning with her, feigning a stomach ache, but nothing worked. Poor aunty must have been worried what she would offer me instead; maybe she didn’t have too many options. When nothing worked out, I had the most innovative idea. The only problem with that was, well, I can plan a lie beforehand and deliver it well, but when I make up an instant lie, I usually get caught.

“Aunty, please don’t insist. I have been diagnosed with high cholesterol”.

I don’t know why I said it, but it was one of those things you say first and think later. It sounded odd to my ears, high cholesterol at 28?

“Oh dear, sorry about it”. Aunty promptly put back the goodies away.

So we sat in an uncomfortable silence the next few minutes, aunty too shocked to ask me to eat anything and me too scared to speak lest I am caught.

“So how did it happen?”, she asked. “Family history?”

Now something in me refused to malign my impeccable family history. I was already feeling guilty for making up illnesses I do not have.

“Uh, not really. Just a bad American lifestyle. Not eating well and all”.

So the conversation drifted to normal soon. We spoke about this and that.

“Where did you get your tests done?”

I must admit I was totally unprepared for the question that caught me off guard. I was about to say our family doctor’s name in Kolkata, but something in my head was screaming our family doctor is aunty’s brother-in-law too.

“Aa- aa- bbb- bbb….”

Aunty stared at me stammer.

“Bbb—bbb--- Bellevue clinic”

“Which one? In Kolkata?”, she asked.

“No no, the one in Seattle? Bellevue clinic in Seattle”

“Oh.. okay”

“My memory getting bad aunty. These days I forget names so often”, I explained lamely.

The chocolate pastry stared at me from the corner of the room for the next 30 minutes, untouched. I came back later that night and had healthy roti and subzee for dinner. I wonder if aunty ever realized I gave her some instantly concocted lie. Even if she did, I’m sure she would know it was an innocuous, fat fat-free lie.

sunshine

Mr. Paypal

Most of the times these days, I pay the price of unemployment. And sometimes, I do not pay the price of unemployment. Call it a social faux pas from a friend who didn’t mean bad. Let us call him Mr. Paypal.

It so happened that I was meeting this long lost friend, Mr. Paypal, for dinner. Conversation flowed smoothly (though uninterestingly) in between chomping food. Once we were done, the waiter promptly produced the check (or bill, whatever you say). Impulsively, I reached into my purse for my credit card. To which my friend rather said in a pitch a few degrees louder,

“Don’t even think of paying. Aren’t you unemployed? You need to save".

The sudden outburst definitely had a few desi heads turn in our direction, and me shifting rather uncomfortably. My initial reaction was to protest, not just at the act of paying for my meal, but also at the unfairness that Mr. Paypal has to scream out something so personal so loudly at a public dinner place so very crowded (and the crowd being desi made it worse). I was still able to pay for my meal, I wanted to protest. I did not.

I am sure my concerned friend didn’t mean to insult me or hurt my feelings. But it is funny how sometimes we vocalize things we would rather say in the mind. Aren’t we taught to not call a poor person poor, or a blind person blind? It is considered rude and insensitive, making fun of people’s miseries. On one hand, I was hurt and mildly offended at the (unintended) social faux pas. On the other hand, I agreed that Mr. Paypal was probably showing concern and was vocalizing something that was so obvious- that I should not be spending when I am not earning. It was an uncomfortable, yet a funny situation for sure. Surely he could have been more polished in his approach. Surely he could have kept his voice low. Or surely he could have paid for me and told me in addition that it was a pleasure to pay for my meals (though this is far from the truth).

It’s interesting how sometimes we blurt out the truth without malice, not realizing it could be a major faux pas. Thanks Mr. Paypal for the meal anyway. I know you didn’t mean anything bad.

sunshine

For the lack of a better word

I remember an incident from childhood when I was 9 or 10 years old. The big boss was supposed to visit us home. He was THE man in father’s office, some sort of the regional manager. I don’t see it these days, but inviting colleagues, especially the ones from the higher hierarchy was something people including my father practiced. While the home was spruced up and the best food was cooked, I was supposed to look neat, smile, and speak when asked to. Not that I particularly cared or looked forward to these meetings, but these “big bosses” were usually from one of the IIMs or XLRI, and it intrigued me to find out what did it take to become like one of these luminaries. On a different note, years later, I find that brand names like IIM, IIT, or MIT has kinda lost its charm for me.

I was always the one in my family known for my better English. The big boss turned out to be a big, obese man in a suit who sweated a lot. While father went in the kitchen to help mother with the food, I was asked to sit and chitchat with the big boss. Soon father summoned me inside and told me in Bengali to ask the big boss if he was feeling hot and wanted more breeze.

Now this has happened to be over the years. A thought goes in my head but when I am supposed to vocalize it, I just blank out. I seriously don’t know how to put the words together to make a coherent sentence. I looked at the big boss, clueless how to ask him in English if he need more breeze. I helplessly looked at the ceiling fan above me, hoping that he would get the clue. Words like “Fan, more or less, on or off, you want more air?” formed in my head, but I knew it was wrong English. Fan, more or less? You want air? I would have laughed (without malice) if someone had asked me that. The seconds seemed like hours and I wished someone would come to my rescue. The big boss got confused with my confused look. Helplessly, I pointed my finger towards the ceiling fan and arched my eyebrows twice. Sign language for the big boss? It was the funniest thing I have done.

Right at this moment, father entered the room and asked if the big boss was feeling hot and if the ceiling fan was helping. Inside, I wanted to shrink into a molecule and vanish. I wondered what the big boss made of a tiny girl pointing to the fan and arching her eyebrows.

And this has happened to be so many times. Just when I am expected to talk, I grope for the right word, desperately trying to come up with an alternative phrase that is still correct English. Last week I wanted to ask my friend when his girlfriend is graduating. Can you imagine I could not think of a simple word like “graduating”. After babbling for seconds, I ended up asking when she is passing out. The moment I said it, I realized how wrong it sounded. To which my friends replied grimly, “Passing out is fainting. Do you mean when she is graduating?”

My embarrassment knew no bounds.

sunshine