Growing up heavy business for a fat girl
Going on vacation was my hardest time. Like good Indians, vacation time meant catching up with close friends and family that included aunts, uncles, cousins, childhood doodhwalas, the guy who helped the guy who helped your uncle the first time he bashed up the car and the chap who had sold your mother pani puri since she was three.
It was a whole lot of “pranaams”, “now what you’re doing, beta?” and “have it once more chocolate, beta - it’s imported”. But while my sister’s holiday to the same place was filled with a marvelling, ”I think so ki her neck has grown longer by a full two inches!” mine, was filled with, “Never you mind, there are plenty short boys who don’t mind some fat. In fact, what a surprise, just right now I have met a boy who will be OK with a fat girl. He is crosseyed.”
Ah. It was hard to be ten years old.
As I grew up though, and became more vocal, it soon became known in the family circle that I had a problem. “She likes to read.” Whispers resounded, “Sansitive-type, you know?” It was a game of family hara-kiri. “MOTI!” a relative would shout gleefully and then watch from a safe vantage place to see whether I would attempt to kill the offender, or dissolve in to tears. Sometimes, they’d involve the neighbours too. “Go on! Go on! Do it! You’ll like it!” the new kid on the block would be urged.
And then they would.
Whispery at first, it would build up to a crescendo. “Fatty…fatty BAMBOLATTY!” Then they’d start dancing. “SITTING ON A TAMBOLLATY!!” at such a deafening volume that some books would fall off the shelf, and some tribes in the hills would begin to wonder what a tambolatty was and start building one with reeds, rat intestines and lantana weed.
There was just one person who sympathised with me. My maternal grandfather. Tall and slim and known (to himself mostly) as the White Tiger of Dhi Punjab, he was racked with feelings of incongruence. “She is sweet. Bas.” He would say to anyone who tried to confide in him their worry about this fat little girl who could likely fall in to all sorts of danger. And from the extent of their concern, this danger could range from stealing in to the kitchen and concocting lethal weapons of mass destruction using a killer combination of leftover butter nan, chaat masala and pure-asli butter, to stitching ugly patchwork quilts to be used to cover girls who died virgins.
It was while on one of these vacations, on a sultry evening in Delhi, just a normal one, in which the adults were drunk, the children were lying around like crocodiles and the old women were massaging the gout in their knees, when Grandma Let’s-Call-Her-Parmeet called out to me. "Ojee! You! Child! Come sit on my lap! My legs are hurting."
And I, all but 15, but trained well in the art of Bombay Page 3 charm replied. “No thanks, Grandma Parmeet. You won’t be able to handle my weight.”
“Ah!” she cackled, saying wittily,”Correct! Correct! That only I wanted to see! That how much is your weight!”
All of a sudden, before I could do something about it - like cry, a roar bulldozed through the crowd. “Khabardaar!” it was my grandfather, swaying from side to side, squinting to focus his eyes better. “Don’t you say anything about my granddaughter’s weight! Don’t you!”
Grandma Parmeet was no less. She burst in to tears, jabbing a short finger in her brother’s direction. “I wasn’t! I was simply….”
“DON’T YOU PARMEETAY! I DARE YOU NOT!”
“But… but… but…”
“She be my granddaughter you witch!”
Grandma Parmeet was now sobbing freely, unable to comprehend her brother’s rage. She stood up, steadying her tell-tale sway with the back of a chair. She raised her hand, one finger curved in indignation.“Maheshay!” Let’s call my grandfather that.”Maheshay! I hate you!”
My grandfather leaned forward, “Parmeetay. I DOUBLE hate you.”