India made me fat

"I got fat in India?!" My jaw drops. I look from one face to another, hoping for some reassurance. I find none.

Go back about one month. I am sitting on the floor with Pete, who has just arrived. I turn to him.

"Pete, I am going to ask you something. I know you're not going to like it and you're going to think I'm weird, but I want you to be completely honest with me," he looks at me perplexed, I look down to the floor. I can't believe I already put this out there, without stopping myself in time. "Pete, seriously now, you see me every day. Have I gotten fatter?" His eyebrows raise, I can feel the panic and dread start to rise. He thought more of me before this moment. "I'm serious, I'm not being silly, but I really feel like I have and I just want to know if I'm crazy or not."

"You're crazy," he says. I can't figure out if he is being honest or if this is the natural reflex of a 30+ year old man who has been asked this very same question over 1,000 times since he was 12 years old. "You aren't fat and you haven't gotten fatter." The timing of his answer was somewhere between trained reaction and contemplation. I couldn't tell if he was serious.

"I think you've gotten skinnier," Petra says.

"No way," I counter. I don't believe them and I feel embarrassed to have asked. I can sense the question hovering in the air long after they've forgotten my insecurities.

Go back fifteen years. I am about seven years old, maybe younger. I am walking around the edge of the Paradise Hills community pool. It is a clear, sunny, summer day. I can still smell the chlorine and the thick air of the locker rooms with slick floors decorated with fallen hairs and the toilets with wet seats. I can hear the water slide and the loud splash as each child is flung out the end into the water. I am walking around the pool toward something I cannot remember. I am thinking something I cannot remember. A group of boys not much older than myself are walking towards me.

"Why do you think you can wear something like that?" One asks as he points to me and snickers to another who is laughing. I look down to see what he is pointing at. I'm wearing a little bikini. Maybe it is pink.

"Your belly sticks out!" Another says. this could have been the end of the conversation, this could have been the beginning. I don't remember. What I do remember is that I had no idea that my body was not okay until that moment, at an age consisting of a single digit, with the round belly of a healthy child.

I'm standing in the small room with the tailor, his wife, and two friends. I decided to have a couple of shirts made before I left India.

"You have old measurements?" I ask the tailor's wife. The tailor had just finished measuring me while she recorded the results. She was now thumbing through the pile of old measurements trying to find the receipt of a friend's commission made two months ago ( I am trying to recreate this same shirt). She doesn't answer. I ask again. She finds the measurements for the shirt I had made in July.

"Bust three inches...waist one inch...hips two inches...shoulders same," he says all this with a smile and head wobble. I look to my friends who are laughing. I finally close my mouth. Was it hanging open or was I laughing?

"No way!" We all seem to be saying. He takes out his measuring tape once more and measures my arm.

"Half inch arm," we are all laughing now. He adds, "Height same." My eyes are wide. I'm somewhere between hysterics and tears. I keep laughing. Is it forced?

"I got fat in India?!" My jaw drops. I look from one face to another, hoping for some reassurance. I find none.

Did I really get fat in India? I don't know. Maybe I gained more muscle. Maybe I gained more fat. Everyone seems to agree that the tailors usually measure loose. They don't want to get too close to your body (especially when the tailor is a man) and you have to really convince them that you want something tighter, or shorter, or more low cut, or sexy.

Here in Mysore, the women look beautiful. They wear long flowing saris, or these long, thigh length blouses with pants and beautiful scarves. Everything is loose and flowing (except the sleeves which, as a rule, are always tight as a drum). You see these women and the grace with which they all carry themselves from the upper class woman in silk to the woman gathering garbage in beautiful vibrant green and purple.

So the first few days in India, you decide to integrate Indian pieces into your wardrobe. Nothing fits right. Everything is up to your neck and too long and boxy. You feel like you're wearing something somewhere between a mumu and a hospital gown. You buy these things anyway, of course.

Later that evening we (my two friends from the tailor and I) are sitting around the living room getting ready to watch the L Word.

"Are you okay?" Rachel asks. "What's wrong?" Its about an hour after we visited the tailor.

"You know," I say as I flop back onto the cushion, my eyes staring up at the ceiling.

"Do you think its because we were raised in America?" She asks.

"Yes," I reply quickly. No one says anything.

In India, having a little extra weight is a sign of good health and prosperity. A friend told me that she was talking to her cleaning lady who told her that she had never tasted a fruit before because they were too expensive. She only ate rice, chapati, curd, and dhal (I think). You'll notice that generally, those of the lower classes are thin and those of the upper are heavier. But those of the upper class who can afford to be exposed to western culture and lifestyle are thinner.

Something else you'll learn in month two or maybe three is that "people go crazy when your hair is down and especially if it is curly," as my friend says. I hadn't noticed up to that point, but all the women indeed had their hair in long braids or ponytails. There was very little variation. I don't really understand why this is. My friend went on to explain how when they see your hair like this, they don't know what to do. "Not even the police will touch you." He adds.

This morning in practice I felt light and strong. Some days you really connect with yourself during practice and this was one of them. It was "steady and sweet". I didn't feel heavier or that I was moving more weight around, despite the information to the contrary.

Yesterday Pete and I walked into the Badsha by the big vegetable market so he could buy gifts for family. Our friend Shoab works there and he greeted us happily at the door. The first thing he says is, "You have gotten so skinny!" I turn to him and laugh. I look at Pete and he's laughing (he already heard the tailor story). I give Shoab the abbreviated version. He replies with a smile, "I guess we always think the ones we love are too skinny because we worry about their health."

The tailor's wife is quiet. In the midst of all the hysterics, I think she said, "but those original measurements were for the tight shirt..."