Saris, Woes, Beauty, Self-Pity and related Ruminations

Hello there beautiful woman. How is it there in your world? All good? What's the view like, five feet and seven inches above the ground, looking down at all of us with those light eyes? Pretty peachy I'd think.

I normally don't reserve much spite for your type. I can understand our worlds are different. You've grown up imagining yourself as a Rapunzel trapped in a stone tower. I grew up hoping The Ugly Duckling was based on a true story. You grew up having brave knights climb into your high tower each evening, sing praises of your light blue eyes, do your homework and leave dutifully. I grew up never doing homework. I assure you I understand we're from different worlds. It doesn't bother me much. Most of the time, at least.

I've known many people like you. I've had nothing to do with it, I can say with conviction; but all the closest friends I've had have been stunners. My first best friend is/was the most popular girl everybody knew. We were both generally obnoxious and easily got away with it. The trouble began when we stepped into adolescence. She got lovelier each day and that people were all reacting differently baffled me. I spent a considerable number of years dealing with all the male attention she was getting. I was like the loyal secretary listening to boys' tales of woe. Our woman, who got more attention than she could handle, was always too busy to notice the trail of broken hearts she left behind. Try not to laugh, but one of the many boys floored by her charms would write me letters describing his feelings for her. We became good friends over these letters we wrote to each other. I still have some of those around here. I wonder what he is up to these days. Funny chap, that one.

I haven't spoken to the lady in years now, except for a few hurried phone calls on of our respective birthdays.I look at her albums on Facebook sometimes. She has seven hundred odd friends and her biggest grouse is staying home on a Saturday night. Sorry guys leave desperate sounding comments on her photos, which I sleepily scan while sidestepping the drool, all of which she dismisses with the practiced disdain of a looker.

I really had only two good friends in school. Both of them were very pretty ladies. One, a graceful dancer, and another a petite, gentle girl with beautiful eyes. Those three years, we were the closest of friends. The last time I met them, however, I struggled to hold conversations on for longer than five minutes. I, and I suspect they were too, was embarrassed at something one of us was saying most of the time. One of them wants to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a model now. She had her set of admirers who, quite logically, became pally with me in pursuit of an 'intro'. What do I say? These guys went on to be my DC team in school.

So you see, I have been friends with pretty girls. Too many of them in fact. It didn't help a long-standing childhood complex about one's looks. Damned cheekbones. And dimples. The absence of dimples which both my sister and my mother have. And I've worn spectacles all my life. And I do nothing with my hair except for tie it up. If my life was one of those parodied American teen movies, I'd be next in line for a makeover that would make me a ravishing beauty with great sadness in her eyes. But life isn't anything like the movies and the only trauma my eyes have experienced is due to that damning allergy one suffered last month.

Enough of all that. The reason I write this had nothing to do with my life lived playing bridesmaid (It wasn't until now. Stupid digressions). Neither is it begging for your sympathy (Actually, it is).

Today I had the unenviable responsibility of choosing a saree to wear to Grad day. My mother being overseas with her favorite offspring, I had to turn to my wiser, radical, rockstar of a grandmum and my very reasonable auntie C. 'Ah. That color. It will make you look dark. Off with it' Ajji says while in the same breath expounding on what sets men's hearts aflutter. Slightly unorthodox, yes. She didn't say that in so many words of course, but you get the idea. This line of thinking is slightly unsettling to me. It is bad enough I have to look at my feet and pretend all is well when girls my age discuss each other's backsides. Listening to my seventy year old Ajji launching into the dynamics of attracting men is about the last straw.

'ji and auntie C tut tut at all the sarees I choose. They laugh cruelly at the black saree I'm holding. They exchange looks when I meekly choose another--in their words-- boring saree. I try on this blingy orange and gold saree which they grudgingly approve of, hastily draping it over my jeans and doing a 360 in front of the mirror. I promptly look like a rotund, ripe pumpkin. My messy hair does nothing to help. They nod disinterestedly. At least it's blingy, I can see them thinking.

I know I tread on dangerous territory here. This can turn out to be a big mistake. Now 'ji, Amma and I represent the family's maddest, eccentric-est geniuses amongst its truly peculiar womenfolk. You know well, that in order to compensate for the vacuum in the sense of humor section, I reach for the available kindness by stepping into self-deprecatory talk. At least that way people will laugh at me, even if out of sympathy. So don't be misled. The 'genius' refers not to me but my Rockstar Gandmum. That woman has, for nearly eighty years now, held all the men and women around her in cold terror. She says it like it is, topped her school, had two grown children by the time she was my age, can take on anybody and his second cousin. Most people, in whispered tones, call her crazy. But I, our 110 decibel shouting matches notwithstanding, have always considered her an insane, radical genius much ahead of her time. Understanding, thus, the kind of prescience I deal with, I must be careful.

The last time I consulted 'Ji on these matters, it took her two seconds to fling my mother's beautiful red Benaras saree aside and make me wear something with the luminous capacity of the headlights of a BMTC bus on high-beam to a cousin's wedding. All while I was wailing my disapproval. Who listens to a hormonal twenty one year old these days anyway. And I suspect I resembled a BMTC bus rather closely that day. Which is more or less a decisive indicator that one is ready for matrimonial bliss, going by the philosophical mores of the family. The priest duly had a premonition that I'd be married off by <random masa> next year. It didn't bother me much for his forecasts have proved to have a tolerance limit of around six years. I had more pressing matters to worry about. And that scalding memory of the security guard at an atm asking me if my --thirteen year old, five feet eleven inches tall-- little brother was my 'only son' only worsened matters.

As the two ladies badger me about my obviously pathetic tastes, I take what questionable route womankind has taken for millenia, looking for solutions to their duress-- I turn to a man to make me feel better about this mess. The uncle, enjoying the technicolor drama unfurling between three shouting women, sucks as much as any guy when it comes to saying the right things to a woman. "Waah. Why am I so ugly" I wail, tugging at the saree futilely to help make me look leaner. "You are a bright girl" he says alluding to the beauty x brains = constant equation. I roll my eyes and make a mental note to take him on a tour of RV's Archi department (Where rules of Physics and Fairness don't apply).

Nobody is kind to us Plain Janes. Long lost, disssstant relatives and friends of my mother's routinely run into her at concerts and marvel at those days when my mother resembled Sharmila Tagore or some such (I know! These aunties!). They never fail to throw a glance my way, grimace and go "Youuuur daughter?" without even bothering to notice that my jaw has dropped to the ground and I'm red as a turnip. My mother quickly mumbles something about me taking after paternal aunts and moves on to discussing details of known and unknown relatives whose children got married, had grandchildren or died.

What do these women in Kanjivarams whose yardsticks for beauty are invariably fair skin, baby fat and round South Indian faces know about the mechanism of good-looks anyway? They have never cried in horror at how fat they look in photos, which our generation you will agree is all about. Agreed, these aunties are all invading Facebook in droves, but I'm thinking that if you're forty and fat, nobody cares.What do they know how it feels to bravely strut around in stilettos and get told that you look 'uncomfortable'? What do these shrieking women know how it feels to spend thirty minutes in the morning staring at a wardrobe that seems to be put together to make you look like a hag. What do they know how the heart sinks to see pretty little things walk around in college, hair perfectly in place even at 4 p.m, dressed like fashion models, and with gait that belongs somewhere on a catwalk in NYC? What do they know of the pressure there is to look 'presentable' on special occasions and still fall hopelessly short? Or of the envy one feels at how some people do it so 'effortlessly'. How those dratted, bulimics-sans-barfing Barbie dolls can wear anything and look good while at it. Have they discovered to their horror seven years after the thought first came to them that those damned cheekbones are just where they are? Whatever happened to getting better with time, do they, goddesses of Mysore Silk, know?


All that wringing hands done, I still don't have a saree to wear for Grad Day. One of the best things college gave me and I, having endured four years of college, its amusements, its mysteries and its callousness together are dying over dressing up for it the last day. We're taking turns crying to each other about how ugly we are and how awesome everyone else will look. I'm telling her she is really beautiful, there is no cause for alarm and she is returning the faith. There is nothing like reassurance. (Men, learn!)

I fully know that it is us Plain Janes who give the Andie McDowells, Giselle Bundchens and Catherine Zeta Joneses of the world their worth. I don't take my responsibility lightly. I know I'm not hopeless. I'm not 14 anymore. I can't be bothered to feel ugly. Except the one time I was moping somewhere in Europe and the color of my skin made me feel a little bit crappy. Then there was the time when I was terribly, terribly infatuated and went around hating how I looked and felt horribly inadequate. The things we do. Letting arbitrary specimen of the male kind make us feel like shit about ourselves. Years of modesty, self esteem, self worth all pulverised, by one hormone-fueled idea. All because of some bastard's charms.

And I've felt beautiful. Sitting on my bed in faded shorts, puffing away, my brain's constant buzz briefly muffled. My messy, problematic hair being its difficult self, its beauty is cryptic to everyone else but its only admirer. I've felt beautiful riding on breezy evenings, with music that seems to be made just for me, and in simple uncomplicated moments that may have nothing to do with what I'm wearing. All notions of beauty encompassed in moments of simple glee.

This, really, is how it should be.


That said, I still don't have a saree for Grad Day. And the thought of frizz makes me weep. Are you there God? It's me, Plain Jane.