oh corpulence, my corpulence

i took a deep breath, sucked my abdomen in and heaved at my jeans, tugged at the two ends and just about managed to button it. i paused and looked at my reflection. the sight that greeted me was not flattering.

i looked like a frumpy bean bag that had crawled into a jam jar.

i turned and presented my profile to the mirror.

my stomach looked like one of those things that johnny sokko’s clanging robot fought with in every episode. i steeled myself and straightened my shoulders… this would just not do.

i sniffed, and patted my paunch (lets face it, that’s what it is), hoping i could coax it into deflating. it wobbled a bit more and even whooped at me in defiance.

“you are married now, you will put on more weight, just you wait”, said amma, i could see the glee in her face (my mother is my greatest critic and is never going to lose an opportunity to rub things in and show me a clear perspective of how things really stand).

hello? like what’s the connection?!

“all women put on weight after marriage”, said a distant aunt, settling her large haunches snugly into the sofa, “it is all the… you know…er… happiness”, this part of the sentence was spoken in a loud whisper accompanied by a pointed look at me and some giggling. the aunt is a very large woman, and giggles in short, quick squeaks, the tremors set her quivering all over, like jelly that’s been twanged every one minute. shudder.

i steadied my nerves which jangled at the giggles and kept my face deadpan, bresson would have cast me in his next film, if he were alive.

i cast a furtive look around at subbu uncle. subbu uncle looks a bit like a miniature sea lion with a bad back and a dead fish for a moustache. i stifled the bile that rose in my system when some very inappropriate imagery popped into my head.

why do people assume that newly married couples screw like rabbits?! (er… do they? really? no! what? really?! )

and what is the connection with sex, marriage and fat?!

i sneaked another look at the aunt, and sniggered in my head, “so you think I am doing all of this for the first time, eh? you poor, chaste, malli-poovu-in-the-hair, snake-like-thick-gold-mangalsutra-soul, HA!”

so now that its been established that there is no real connection… what can be done?! this cant be tut tutted anymore and be called “puppy-fat-it-will-go-away”. it cant be folded and wrapped into a box and put away so it can be taken out, put in the sun and shaken every once in a while.

it cant be persuaded or just willed away. i love food and i hate exercise. staring at it is not putting it into any real shame either. and i am not falling for all the sauna belts and kinky things that these gorgeous, flat abdomened aliens with big boobs and bright smiles are selling on tv.

i am just going to go and buy some loose clothes with folds and gathers that will hide the damn thing. ah! that’s it! better still, i will go to a store which keeps ‘vanity-sized’ clothes. pick up a few extra large sizes disguised as small and feel really good about all of this.

or maybe I will go buy something which will reveal so much cleavage that no one’s going to look any further.

this way, i don’t even need to spend any money on pedicures any more.