Hell yeah!

Woke up to umpteen posts on Sridevi's demise and had to vent.

While we should respect the dead, and I do, her immense talent and the joys her movies brought... to me she was India’s finest female actor. Thanks to social media we will mourn her, cremate her and dissect her life and also make grand proclamations of how she should have led it. We know it all.

There are so many posts about her surgeries and the need to look young and "beautiful" including holding her husband responsible, why couldn’t he have stopped her apparently!!! ... from which angle did she look like she needed to be told and stopped, we insult our own intelligence by giving anyone else the right to dictate.

But, a great time to revisit our own thinking on beauty and appearances and the lengths we go to achieve this. Just last week, my 28 year old Lebanese colleague shared the contacts of a clinic where she had been to. For collagen injections on her lips for the perfect pout and chemical peels. I’m not ashamed to admit I was tempted, not for the pout but the lines between my brows and around my eyes. I want to look good too.

Whose definition of good is what I’m questioning now.

How simple life was, I remember the days of my parents, not too long ago and yet prevalent in their psyche that voluptuousness was true beauty. Our genetic makeup is essentially of a full round figure, look at the illustrations of the Kamasutra, the temple carvings all over India, our Goddesses and Ravi Varma’s paintings to the actresses we so loved and to the women in our families. Did they get flack for fat?

I’m first to admit that we are not our mothers and though in our mid-forties, our spirit is way younger. My mother was 41 when I got married and I remember thinking that she was old! I’m 46 and God knows I don’t feel my age, is there a set norm for that too? You’re supposed to feel and think and look this way because you are this age?

Ah! Coming to the crux of the matter, we don’t not want our physical appearance to mirror our age especially since our mind and spirit do not conform to the physical changes of the body. A dearly beloved friend who is 60 but has the body of a 20 year old tells me, I don’t want to look an age I don’t feel. Another tells me, you’re either beautiful or lazy. Such tremendous emphasis on being well turned out. I am desperate to stop hennaing my hair and going grey yet balk at the thought, I will look old methinks and a despairing sense of gloom sets in.

We talk about preserving our culture from the cow to the cowards, of women’s emancipation and equal rights, of a forward society. Bullshit. The first thing we do when we meet each other is comment on how much weight we have lost or gained. We talk disparagingly about those who are ‘fat’. Looking like you’ve given the entire world and its cousin a blowjob with sunken cheeks and pallid skin is fine. We’ve got cosmetics to take care of that.

We, us, we are the harbingers of change, not the eighties, nineties or the millennial kids. It’s us. Coming from the sleepy town of Mangalore, we ventured out, from the education to the professions or even being home makers but all of us have a voice and an attitude. Let me repeat we are NOT our mothers. We are the bridge between the complete disconnect of our parents and children’s generations.

True freedom is freeing the mind from shackles and misconceptions and someone else’s idea of what acceptable should be. It may not be the curves our parents admired or the planes our kids do. We should be allowed to age gracefully wrinkles and all and why do we need to hide them exactly? I have lines around my eyes and mouth from laughing too much and those between my brows from frowning too much. I’m short staffed on patience, hell yeah. Each line emerged as my inner self expressed itself. They are my badges of honor and dishonor.

Stay healthy, walk your butt off, work out, stretch those muscles with yoga and whatever the hell gets your goat. Do you need surgical intervention to craft a body that someone else will glance at for a few moments, exclaim and then promptly forget. People are too busy with their own shit to give you more than fleeting thoughts and this is whether you’re fat or thin. Loose talk drifts faster than pee after a bladder ultrasound.

When you see a woman in a saree with love handles popping out, don’t snicker but look into her eyes, feel her verve and if you are inspired, go tell she’s beautiful. Every woman is. And yes you women, who claim to be intelligent, modern and responsible, behave like you are. Don’t ever let anyone else tell you what and how you should be.