People | Bodies

Body Boundaries, Indian Culture, and Healing Enough to Be Mothers to Our Mothers

My relationship with food was a combination of deep love, reverence, and guilt—making it impossible for me to give it up.

I was nineteen, standing on the deck of a boat. We’d sailed out into the Arabian sea, off the coast of the Indian state of Gujarat to dolphin-watch. My family and I were vacationing in Mithapur, a coastal salt-making town. The sky was cloudless. A bright sun beat down on glimmering blue waters. The breeze was briny and felt delicious on my legs. I fixed my gaze on the horizon, delighting in the way the dolphins jumped like excited commas through the air. Suddenly, I felt someone’s eyes on my body. I turned and saw that my mother wasn’t squinting at the ocean, but at me.

“What?” I asked.

She pursed her lips. “You need to lose some weight, Madhura.”

I gawped, ripped out of the idyllic moment.

“It’s just that I’ve never seen you fill up shorts like that,” she finished.

My heart was pounding, cheeks hot, full of shame. I was livid for the rest of the two-hour journey back to the guest house. At dinner, I moodily picked at ghee-soaked paranthas. My mother tried to make amends. “You can’t be angry with me, kanna! I’m only saying this because I love you. Wouldn’t you rather this came from me? From someone wants the best for you?”

*

My mother believed I was near-perfect. There were minor issues with my body, like thick ankles, or broad feet which widened the sandals I borrowed from her. These were inherited from my father. But she loved my mouth (father’s), my wrists (hers), my eyes and eyelashes (father’s). Luckily, my (father’s) arms didn’t get fat.

I was never thin. I gain weight easily. As a teenager, I was anywhere between twenty and thirty pounds over the “ideal number” for my height. Indians cannot stand the idea of inadequacy, and my overachieving family were no exception. I had tons of freedom—my parents encouraged curiosity and expression. But this came with a generous side of criticism. Everything from my grades to my body were measured against a high bar. The general attitude was: You need to be your best self. Your healthiest self. Your thinnest self. You are capable of more. Stop doing yourself a disservice.

*

I know where my mother’s body dysmorphia comes from. Growing up, she was the tallest, thinnest girl in all of Pondicherry. She was flat-chested, narrow-hipped and tiny-waisted. While South Indian women were traditionally feminine, with long mallipoo-adorned hair, wrapped in saris or salwars, my mother wore jeans. Her legs were long, her hair short. If that were her body today, she would be considered a model. But in a time and place where voluptuousness was the ultimate standard of beauty, she was ridiculed. Nasty men called her amblai-pomblai. Man-woman. My blood boils and my heart breaks for her. At no time was her body right. Just as it turned into its softer version, the standard changed.

I understand her nostalgia.

The wistfulness for her concave stomach, before it housed two children.

The reparations made through me.

*

Mithapur coincided with the advent of the “size-zero” hype among Bollywood celebrities, pioneered by the actor Kareena Kapoor. Until then, thinness wasn’t the benchmark of beauty in Bollywood. Thinness came from the West, and the trend stuck. As recently as two years ago, the actor Parineeti Chopra thanked the pressures of Bollywood for pushing her to “achieve” her ideal body. What she lost in weight she gained in confidence, peace, pride, and a legion of women for whom she served as inspiration.

Weight loss is success. And we all had to triumph. So, in addition to fair skin being the main standard of beauty (a colonial hangover), Indian women now had to be “slim.”

About a year after our vacation, in law school, I was sitting on a plastic chair in a lecture hall. A girl in front of me asked her friend if she was contained within the parameters of the seat, or whether she was spilling out. Could she check? I looked around and noticed, alarmed, that no woman was spilling out of her seat. Was I? The thought still haunts me every time I sit in a chair. As everyone’s bodies around me narrowed, I became obsessed with the size of mine. It was shamefully wrong. How could I contain it?

*

When it comes to eating in India, you just can’t win. Food is fraught.

When I was a kid, my father would sit at the table until I ate every last morsel on my plate. This was so I would be cognizant of the immense privilege of being able to eat in the first place, with so many Indian children starving. Food was guilt.

My grandmother spoiled me with her cooking. Food was love.

My mother occasionally snuck me out of school early to eat at our favorite Chinese restaurant. Food was delight.

But all the while, the samosas I couldn’t stop eating were making me fat. Food was shame.

As everyone’s bodies around me narrowed, I became obsessed with the size of mine. 

Indians often use “healthy” as a euphemism for “fat.” Perhaps it comes from fatness being a sign of prosperity. My family uses “gundu,” the Tamil word for fat as a term of endearment, like

Argentinians use “gordo.” Fat is lovable, squeezable, and biteable. But not when you’re nearing marriage. Then it’s a disqualifier.

At functions and gatherings, women gossip and tut about how “Raji, married five years ago, has really let herself go, na? Her poor husband!” They can’t fathom how any man would want to have sex with a not-skinny woman, and yet, these aunties stuff you with bhajiyas when you visit their homes. Refusing their offering is criminal, because for so many who have been relegated to kitchens after marriage, food is their means of expression. Aunties feel fully entitled to pinch and prod your cheeks or your ass, and say things like, “Oho, looking ‘healthy,’ but you’ll have to lose this fast, haan. Arre, Pooja is personal trainer now!”

Boundaries are not a brown thing.

*

Neither is disordered eating. That’s a firang thing.

That is, a white-person-thing was happening to a brown girl. My relationship with food was a combination of deep love, reverence, and guilt, making it impossible for me to give it up. I was ashamed that I couldn’t do the one thing that would yield results. So, at the cusp of my twenties, I started exercising obsessively. I kept a food diary—a book where I logged calories for every single thing I consumed.

I was eating child-sized portions. My fragmented grazing throughout the day amounted to one hearty meal. It didn’t matter if I was in pain, or fatigued, I would pump my legs and arms on the elliptical until I felt hollow. I did only cardio—no muscle-building, because that would increase the number on the scale, and I already had heavy bones.

I was terribly unathletic and detested sport. I enjoyed biking, but I never considered that “exercise.” Exercise was punitive, something I did because I couldn’t control my appetite. I never entertained the idea of looking for an activity that excited me. Working out was joyless, exhausting, and purely functional. But it seemed to be working. Shedding the pounds only made my obsession worse. A missed day was a catastrophic event, an example of my lack of commitment, a confirmation that the weight would come back.

Weight loss can be excruciatingly slow, like wading through molasses while wearing a winter coat. I became increasingly impatient, and so at some point, I started skipping meals. Once this started, I didn’t eat breakfast for about two years. Having lectures at 7:30 in the morning absolved me of any responsibility to eat beforehand—all the better if I slept through the morning class. I’d eat one guava at noon, with lime and chili powder; or a vada pav. At no point was I ever underweight, even when I lost over twenty pounds. In my mind, it was because I was terribly lazy and undisciplined . . . but it could be fixed. My new body was evidence. So I never subjected my eating to an honest evaluation. I thought I’d be jubilant—and to some extent, I was. But inexplicably, I still disliked my body. My thighs still touched. I still had love handles. I lost weight on my boobs, but that damn roll near my armpit wouldn’t go.

Weight is failure.

And sometimes, weight loss is dishonesty.

No one knew I was skipping meals. It was easy to lie, to come off as healthy and fit. Everyone viewed my exercise regimen as something to be emulated. My “diet” was a sign of supreme self-control. My parents were amazed at my dedication. “Dedication” is the wrong word.

The correct one is “obsession.” Mental hygiene is not a desi thing. Growing up, we didn’t have the right lexicon for our brain chemistry. Especially women. Our glossary was full of spiky words that blamed us for our feelings. If we were depressed, we were “ungrateful.” If we were angry, we were “difficult.” If we were anxious . . . well, that was just life. We had no business complaining about it.

If I didn’t exercise, or if I ate more than I thought I should, the chatter would begin:

“Fuck, I have to work out double tomorrow or I’ll stop losing weight.

Why did I eat that fucking pedha?

Fuck, I had two slices, not one. Right? Did I have three . . . how many? Two and half? Did I eat the crust?

I think I need to do an hour on the elliptical tomorrow.

Should I go now?

It’s past midnight.

I won’t be able to sleep if I don’t go.

I’ll go now.”

*

This obsessive body hate lingered through my twenties. My now-husband, Anil, is a food enabler: a lover of experimental cooking, eating, and even cleaning up after. Eating with him is a joy. So I worked out obsessively to compensate. This time, I was aided by a Fitbit and MyFitnessPal that showed in me in real time how many calories I consumed and burnt. I could pace away a small glass of wine with thirty circles around our tiny hall. Fifty for a tablespoon of peanut butter. A 10k run before dinner at Lucali, or else we had to reschedule. If Anil exercised without me, or when I didn’t want to, we’d have earth-shattering fights.

The thing that saved me was cooking.

After we got married, my work visa ran out and I couldn’t find employment sponsorship. I found myself at rock bottom, wracked with feelings of failure and self-loathing. I needed a purpose. Until that fall, cooking was a lazy weekend activity I enjoyed with Anil. One rainy October day, I gave in to a hunger a pang that propelled me to make palak paneer on my own for the first time ever. Not only did the hours fly by in the blink of an eye, but I had created something I could see, touch, and taste. I’d just cracked open the door to a whole new universe.

My “diet” was a sign of supreme self-control.

When I made food, I felt productive, and accomplished. Knowing that I would spend time in the kitchen filled my hitherto empty days with infinite possibility. The feeling of using my own hands to shape that batter I made into cookies, and watching them bake while I licked the dough unabashedly off the spatula, the bowl, the crevices between my fingers, gave me the excitement of a child. When I pulled the crispy, gooey, chewy frisbees out of the fridge and bit into its decadence, I couldn’t believe I actually had any part in its creation.

Food was now success. I wanted to revel in it. It didn’t cause guilt, shame, or anxiety—but rescued me from it. Naturally, I gained weight, but this time I felt differently about it. I no longer wanted to skip lunches and dinners. Food wasn’t something I had to restrict, or work off. Food was deliverance, the kitchen my temple.

As I slowly pieced myself back together, I found the strength to take myself to a therapist. I journeyed deeper into myself and began to understand what my walls were made up of. Why my thoughts were the way they were. What I was healing from.

I also discovered my body’s power. All the potential in its imperfection.

I’d begun practicing yoga. Here was “exercise” that made me feel blissfully light. Doing asanas required me to focus on myself intensely, and I began developing a tender intimacy with my body. Like a lover with a muse, I marveled at the wondrous things it could do. How gloriously my spine arched in full wheel. The curve of my pointed foot in Bird of Paradise. My yoga teacher would say things like, “Your body is the home you live in. Thank your legs for holding you up. Give your hips some love.” Earlier, I would have scoffed. But now, it made me cry. The idea was radical to me—to thank my broad shoulders for supporting me in a headstand. To love them.

*

Intimacy is power. My mother’s fingers constantly hover over a DO NOT PRESS button. When it slips, I detonate. I can set her off too. The day Trump won the Republican nomination, I vented over Facetime to her, “What are we going to do?” I fumed. Her reply: “Madhura . . . you have a double chin.” I screamed and hung up. I spent the morning in a white-hot rage, examining the cursed second chin like a piece of forensic evidence, trying to massage it away, fixating on what had caused it to bloom from under the first one. I hadn’t felt self-loathing this intense in about a year. It was exhausting, and I couldn’t handle it. By nightfall, I was spent.

Sometimes we need to be our own mothers. To protect our baby selves.

I knew what I had to do.

The next morning, I called my mom and burst out, “So about that chin comment . . . ”

The silence was punctuated by the sound of her breath. I took in a deep one.

“Look mummy, when you say negative stuff about my body, I can’t think about anything else. I can’t eat, or sleep. I feel really anxious.”

“But, sweetheart, I always tell you how lovely you look! Remember last week when you sent that picture . . .”

“Then I feel like I fucked up, because my body isn’t like that now. Those ‛compliments’ are not positive reinforcements. They’re current failings. Do you want me to freak out? Drop everything to work out?”

“Of course not!” She breathed a sigh of acceptance, her palms blossoming open as if in preparation to carry some baggage. “Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”

“Please stop saying anything about my body,” I said shakily. “No compliments. No tough love. Nothing.”

Silence.

“You’re not helping,” I choked. “I love you. But you have to stop.”

“Of course, my darling,” she said, finally.

*

I have been building a safe space around myself, somewhere I can mend. The body-talk embargo is its roof. I’m still healing. I think I will be recovering all my life.

Sometimes, we heal enough to be mothers to our mothers.

I have talked at length with mine about eating, exercise and bodies. She understands—at least theoretically—poisonous desi culture, and unreasonable beauty standards. She’s trying to rewire her brain to be kinder to herself. There is no wedge between us, just healthy hedges that quietly flourish. In the dressing rooms of clothing stores, we’ve replaced critical comments with “love” or “not my jam.” My mother is now brave enough to wear tops without sleeves.

We swim together, delighting in swift laps as much as languorous paddling. We guiltlessly eat bowls of aloo bhujiya during our Jane the Virgin marathons.

Allies.