I scoffed at it as I scrolled down, not really reading anything. Rich of Aunty V to send me motivational stuff, I thought, annoyed. I hated hearing about body positivity. It annoyed the hell out of me because it was easy for everyone else to say things like love your body. They weren’t me. They didn’t know how I felt. Why should I love my stupid body if I didn’t want to?

I still glanced down the article and one sentence in particular popped out at me.

How I feel about myself has nothing to do with my appearance.

What? That was absurd. It had everything to do with my body, I thought as I wrapped up the rest of the paratha and stuffed it back inside my bag, feeling a sudden burst of anger, the warm feelings from my conversation with Raghu all but forgotten.

29

Even though we stayed in the same house, Aunty V had started sending me texts. She kept out of my way because I was studying, but I was glad because I didn’t want to ‘discuss’ the things she’d been sending me. Most of the time, I deleted the links without opening them, but sometimes, curiosity got the better of me and I read a couple of them.

The ideas confounded me, and despite not wanting to, I found myself getting drawn into some of them. I read and re-read one particular sentence by someone called Alison Stone, a psychotherapist: ‘When we spend less time thinking about our bodies, it affords us room to focus on other things.’

Could it be true, I wondered. What did it mean for me?

There were also some famous actresses who were talking about how they didn’t want to spend time looking at themselves in the mirror because they had so many other wonderful things to do. I frowned because it was easy for them to say that. They were gorgeous. But if I were to understand this concept, it wasn’t about looking in the mirror and finding good things about myself. It was about looking at my body and thinking of what it allowed me to do, about my body as a functional being, not as an object to be admired.

I put away my phone and tried to focus on my studies, but the words from other women, not just celebrities who felt this way, kept floating back into my mind. Was it possible? If I didn’t have to love my body, I didn’t have to hate it either? What of Ms Piggy and Fat Ananya, I wondered. The words that had scarred my mind and shaped my life. I had allowed them to become alternate personas. But what if I was able to treat them just as words? What if I stopped giving them so much importance? Was it even in my control?