Fat

What is the single most obsession we have today? Cricket? IPL? money? The proverbial question: what do women and today, even men want? Who are the new haves and have nots? 

The answer is simple. Just take a look at the ad in the T.V where wearing a designer suit will make you the C.E.O of a company, where using a particular brand of soap will make you more beautiful than ever. What do all these have in common? The obsession to look good at all times in all situations. Ever seen a 'fat' person in these ads? A resounding no! Even the junk-food joints' commercials have skinny people gobbling away.

Its obvious, we all want to have that hour-glass figure on which we can flaunt the designer labels, turn heads and make everyone go ‘wow’! Then we have 'it'! Now what if a poor soul, yes I don’t mean just the girls, does not have a hot body? The answer is easy. You are the 'butt' of all jokes.

I am one of them. No, not someone with a fancy disease or syndrome or even gay (coming out never seemed so cool). I am fat! Period. Where ever I go this reckless obsession to ‘look good’ is unfathomable and unrelenting. I cannot go shopping without feeling sorry for myself, I meet someone after ages and all I can think of is how this person is going to react at my appearance. I make a wise remark on something and I know that somehow my weight will make its way in the middle of the conversation. In fact, since my weight gain (yes, now I am talking like I have a contagious, incurable disease) I cannot have a conversation with anyone that is not weighed down by my weight.

How can I forget all the aunties, uncles, ‘well wishers’ who are all so wise and full of unsolicited advise on how I can get back in shape and conquer the world! Everyone, you may or may not know their last name (many cases not even their first!) is there to put me out of my misery. The most seemingly incompetent person assumes the mantle of a doctor/ nutritionist/ dietitian and what not. ‘Drink this ‘magic potion’ in the morning’, ‘don’t do that in the afternoon’, ‘avoid this’ and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone said ‘cut-off that limb’ altogether as a 'tip’ to lose weight.

When people tell me I am fat. I don’t and cant and more than anything, dont want to deny that I am fat. I am not in denial! So what? I absolutely despise and cannot understand why they all seem to think that I am unaware of it till that moment. God! do they carry on. Seems like they cannot stop to save their very life. It goes from ‘you are fat’ to ‘exactly’ how fat! What better than concluding it with a parathian shot, 'you don’t look as good as you did before!'

But the irony of this is, these very same experts never complimented me on my looks or told me how healthy I was ‘before’!

No, this blog is not about how I gained the weight, what all I am doing (or not doing) to lose weight. I am not going to hide behind the versatile excuse of 'hormonal imbalance’. Its about how my life changed.

I have an advantage of the proverbial ‘before’ and ‘after’ that is associated with fat people and mine is reversed. In my case, ‘before’ was when I was NOT fat and after is, well, you know what. As a kid and most of my adult life I was what people would then tease me as ‘skinny’. So did I have the best life possible? Yes and I continue to do so (by God’s Grace). But was it because I was thin? Not really. Being hardworking, focusing on being good at studies, my work, making friends, caring for and loving my family and just going about life with all my flaws and finesse, which is not very different from who I am today. At that time I didn’t think that I was the ‘chosen one’. I didn’t realize I was in the chic first class. Weight gain, lo and behold! I was bumped out of the elite and into the ‘cattle class’.

Even the disabled are called ‘differently able’, but once you are fat every offensive reference in the dictionary is ‘just a joke’ and you are 'over-sensitive’ if you feel bad and the jokes just wont stop if you play-along! Probably, they are all thinking that feelings are lost behind your enormous weight.

So what is my point? Am I cribbing and complaining? Maybe. What I really want is the next time you meet me, talk to me about everything including my weight but just stop before you do the honours of pin-pointing the exact number of kilos I have gained and exactly where. (Somehow they all seem to obsess over the ‘exactness’). Because, as hard as it is for you to believe, I know! I don’t want your pity and 'awws' and 'ouches' simply because I am not suffering from a disease. Hell, when Aishwarya Rai, whose praises the world wouldn’t stop singing at one point, is in the eye of a storm for weight gain (forget about her heroic delivery of a baby girl at 37 years of age!) what chance to do ordinary girls stand?

As for me (and everyone like me), don’t carry my weight for me because I don’t know about losing those pounds but boy! do I know about jutting a fist... That’s a weight you don’t want to be weighed down under!

Urooj Fathima