Update on chaos…

..the maids and the cook are on indefinite leave. While this would have been perfectly acceptable with me had I had carte blanche to order in from the plethora of newly sprung up restaurants in the neighbourhood, the tragedy is that the husband is now on a healthy eating binge and insists on homecooked food. The mother in law has no hands left, considering even my honest to goodness attempts at straight forward dal and rice result in the dal being oversalted and the rice being overcooked. To add to my grief, the driver has also taken off to his village for the Ganapati festivals. I feel orphaned. Have now resolved to keep fulltime help in the new house. My careful french manicure has gone the way of chronic nailbiters with chewed to the rim nails, which have actually broken off thanks to the infinite scrubbing that accumulates each day. Has anyone ever realised how many vessels we Indians use for a simple dish. Take dal. The simplest you can get. One to cut and wash in, one to boil in (the cooker) and the third to do the tadka in. Three vessels to scrub. Have invested in ready to make meals which were promptly junked by the MIL, who rightly claimed they were potents of Satan, infested with additives and preservatives which would do nasty things to our bloodstreams. I sobbed fat tears as I saw my Parampara Chicken Makhani go into the gloop of our wet waste-dry waste bin.

Anyway, the latest status on the home interiors is that husband and I have decided we need a mediator between the two of us, since we had come close to signing on the divorce papers over a wall cabinet, so an interior designer has been called in who is asking us to pay more than what we paid for the damn house to do it up. The husband is in a right funk, considering the man has shown him dreams of gold leaf ceilings and carved marble statues of Greek goddesses as pillars, while I am being the voice of reason and practicality and insisting we reuse as much of our old furniture as we can. Therefore, the impasse. Left to me, we would have had low ethnic seating, and lots of beautiful artifacts all around. Left to the brat, all the artefacts would be flung from floor 15 into the wonderfully landscaped playarea cum garden that the house looks out on, and clunked a gardener into oblivion. I have now settled for a do what you want with the house but I need grills on every balcony status. The other day when we were making a casual drop in to check a leaky tap, the brat managed to unlock a balcony and siddle in, chortling in glee. My heartbeats havent been the same since.

On a lighter note, read somewhere that muscle weighs more than fat. Therefore I am all muscle. Chew on that.

Me, the grubby little hoarder, me…

Thank the Lord for the good husband. He is the one who periodically braves life and limb and dives headfirst into my wardrobe to cleanse it of toxins, alien life forms and grubby little tshirts I last wore to college but still hang on to ferociously in the optimism that one day I will be able to get back into them without the seams splitting instantly. If it wasnt for him, my clothes would have multiplied enough times to take over the earth and all the wardrobes within. He is sweet enough to do this exercise in a disarmingly nice way, which includes the buying of new clothes so a lot of the old can be chucked out, for some of the new to get in. Now that we plan to move to a new place, with huuuuuge balconies, my first ungracious thought is, wow, can build in more cupboards here. More place. Therefore more things that can be hoarded. I get it from the mother. She has, and I swear to the Good Lord that this is true, my prescriptions from the pediatrician when I was six. A three decade old prescription. Filed and kept carefully. Through gadzillion home changes and shiftings. She sat herself down with her reading glasses one fine evening when I was cribbing enthusiastically about how the brat was still the poster boy for the starvation diet, though I fed him everything to fatten him up, and dug up a prescription which had me shift gears from skeletal to the Little Lotta I became. Its a different story that I would never, in the best of my minds and sanity, want brat to go through the stress of being overweight, so I declined politely, at which, she calmly filed it right back. For what, I gasped? Its thirty years old. The medicines have changed. For all you know these might not even be available any more. She was implacable. “They worked for you. Someone might need it, even if you dont.” She’s that type. Getting into her loft is like wandering into Alladin’s cave. Lizards aside, there are fabric pieces, remnants from old upholstery that can probably be framed for the antique value they have. All my school report cards are filed and kept neatly in a drawer. My school photographs. Her telephone and electricity bills dating back ten years. Ten years? Get a raddiwala now. Mounds of newspaper piles accumulate in her window ledge just in case she might need to refer to a clipping ten months old. Getting her to get the raddiwalla up to dispose of that is like suggesting I get her to blaspheme the Good Lord. She will look at me all big eyed behind her spectacles and teary, and ask me sternly why her raddi bothers me. I have given up.

My mother in law has junk everywhere. So much so that the husband has issued her a blanket ban on carrying any of it with us to the new place. In our lofts are drums filled to brim with bits and pieces of leftover wood from carpentry work done when I was newly married. Twelve years ago. Bits of wire from wiring work done when the house was being renovated is another drum. Old switchboards taken out when the switchboards were being replaced have been wiped clean lovingly, wrapped carefully in newspapers and kept aside. Incase. We ever need switchboards. Old bedsheets that tear in straight lines with age should we ever try to open them are stacked in neat piles under the bed. I must hand it to her though. All her junk is neatly maintained and constantly organised and reorganised. Cant say the same about the kitchen though.

Comparitively, I must say I am better. I used to be anal about my fashion magazines. I had towering piles hidden from view behind curtains, inside cupboards, under beds, until one fine day I decided I had not missed my calling as a fashionista and would never be one, so chucked them all out. I still buy them by the dozens every month, but then turn them into the raddipile the moment am done with them. Thats one pat on my back for me. Now only if I could be as ruthless with my shoes and old clothes and old bags and yes, my make up. I have makeup with me that I wore to my college send off party. Really. I kid you not. Make up has overtaken two drawers in my cupboard. I dont have the heart to throw the old stuff out. Even though I might not actually use it anymore, just the security of it being around makes me feel good. And yes, you guessed it, nothing ever gets over, because there is so much around to choose from. The only lipstick that ever got over in my lifetime of compulsive lipstick usage is a L’Oreal shade called Fawn Fatale. And strangely enough, have not bought it again. Therefore I continue to have half used lipsticks lying in trays by the dozens.

I think this shifting will be good for me in more ways than one. I will finally prune out stuff I dont need in my closet. And I will hopefully realise I dont need the security of a thousand and one clothes to feel happy. I should be happy being me. Its not the clothes and the shoes and the bags. Cmon, whom am I kidding? Will just build in extra storage and be at peace.

Why I feed off my fat

This story is what set me thinking. A story on CNNs online edition about BDD. Body Dysmorphic Disorder. And believe you me, with the half a brain I have left, and the miniscule time left from surfing other people’s blogs and passing on bad jokes through chain mail, it takes a lot to set me thinking. And most of my thinking is on the lines of which store should I mentally burgle. Given that almost the entire lot of stores in Inorbit is on half price sale once again (Shoppers Stop–lovely mojris and shoes at Rs 399 and 499. Throw off your shoes and run there. All I managed to buy between the brat running amok in the aisles was a measly serving tray which was marked at Rs 349 and on sale at Rs 99. Lifestyle again on 50 per cent sale. Kaysons. Pepe. UCB. I’m dying. Someone cut up my credit cards now.)

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/DS/00559.html

It talks about a condition known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder. It could also explain why I wear a UK size 10 and feel I am humungous. Rationally, and on a clear sunny day I know that I am exactly three kilos overweight. For my height, 56 to 58 kilos should be the healthy range I should be at to look human. But the fact that I have touched 60 kilos has grown to LochNess proportions in my mind. On a rational sunny day I know I still fit into the jeans I wore before brat was born, albeit give and take for a little bit of a tummy that stubbornly refuses to get itself back in. And those little rolls of fat that decide to lope themselves over the waistband at the side, needing loose kurtis to stay camouflaged. Which then means all my ridiculously paid through the nose for DKNY and D&G and Cavalli lycra fits are meant for days when I am feeling very brave or very drunk to dare step out in public with them on. But then, thats what caesareans are all about, great excuses to keep a bit of tummy hanging out.

But there is something called seratonin which is working overtime in my brain I presume and making every glance in the mirror seem like I am face to face with a runaway elephant from the circus. Rationally I know that there are people out there getting butt implants to have the kind of butt I go around draping in tent like kurtis in sheer embarassment. But then I can now happily blame it all on BDD. Dont blame me, its BDD. And polycystic ovaries while I am at it. And let me find some more reasons while I am on the case. Can I blame the computer too? Spending too much time on it and not enough time off the butt and walking around causes big butt syndrome.

But realistically speaking, and am trying hard not to look at my reflection while I type this, I am actually not overweight. I am pleasantly plump. Perhaps a bit too pleasantly plump. Too much plumpness. And a little bit of pleasantness. Those are all trick mirrors around me, designed to make me look 20 kilos fatter than I actually am. All the sales people who tell me “No maam, we dont have that in XL,” are actually part of a conspiracy which also includes the Roswell aliens and the Bermuda Triangle secret file, and all the weighing machines I stand on or will ever pass by chance have been doctored by a mobile crew of mechanics who set them to twenty kilos below actual weight, and the fact that I can never fit into airline seats comfortably is because they deliberately assign me a seat designed for leprechauns.

Therefore, am back to cut the carbs and walk the miles. No dinner, minimal carbs, and a long walk whenever I can get some volunteer to handle the brat. I promise you a five kilo loss in a month. I promise myself a new wardrobe. Now thats incentive worth starving oneself for. 

Here’s what I will take a tip from, a New York Times Lead Story: Susan Jacoby suggests that a woman assuage appearance anxiety by salting her money away in a retirement savings account instead of spending thousands on lifting her face or enlarging her breasts, But why not donate those thousands to smoothing the lives, expanding the opportunities of less fortunate women -in Nicaragua, in Eritrea, in our own crisis centers?