Teening my 30s

Or trying to live the life I've missed (not a tragedy, I promise but didn't want to start the post with a whiney title)....learning how to style my thin (sparse) hair and pushing my heavy legs into a pair of nylon stockings. As a teenager in Mumbai, I've never had the need for styling or stockings. It was too humid to encase my legs in nylons without space for my pores to breathe - heck, I'd be sweating buckets just putting them on. Leggings, yes, stockings, never! Plus I was always conscious of my thicker (than my friends') legs despite not being a fat teen. I got a little fat towards the end of my teens and well, the job took it all off so life was good.

The hair was always tied up and styled (straightened) only when going out to weddings or my school farewell party (like prom). I rarely wore anything other than jeans and a t-shirt. And hair was always tied back to tame my curly and stiff - often frizzy - hair.

Towards my early 20s, my hair started to thin out thanks to a female baldness gene in my family. My sis doesn't have it, thank goodness. But it came at the wrong time for me, just when one starts to attend work parties, get hooked to other eligibles, etc. I needed long-term treatment which I still need, this isn't a problem that goes away after a few years of medicines but seems a more life-long thing. I do it, I ignore it at times and my hair starts to thin out again. Currently, I'm back on the medic wagon.

So, I let things go after I got married. I was never a perfect weight or figure and it's always been a work in progress for me. I realise more and more that I was still ok until I went on the Pill and also pigged out a lot after we got married. We would always go out on weekends, drink like fishes and return home after midnight. Weekends were filled with new restaurants to try, or bring fish home and fry it or make a wonderful chicken gravy dish. Or we'd go home to my mom's and have a feast there - often Indian or Chinese takeout if not pizza. I started to change dress sizes and my ex-co-workers were so flabbergasted (everyone told me I was sooo fat). I went on a salad diet that worked a little while before I came here but just as it's been a lifelong process for me, I put on weight when I went back to Mumbai for my sister's wedding.

So, now I'm on Kellogs every morning which keeps me sated until lunchtime. My eating habits are now much, much more improved. Now, I've only got to try regular gymming so I can tone my legs and butt. Maybe a yoga or Zumba class wouldn't hurt if only to get me into the mood to walk to the gym every morning or evening. Whenever I'm fighting the war to make myself go to the gym, I'm reminded of this patient of Becker who's telling me that he tries to go in (to the gym) but something always stops him from getting inside. Becker's retort is classic:

"Would it help if they buttered the door?"

This always makes me crack up.

So, anyway, I'm rediscovering heels and platform wedge shoes, squashing my legs in stockings which despite their opaqueness, make me feel sexy, and I'm channelling it to try and trim myself down to what I was when I got married. I wasn't thin - not even slimmy slim - but I liked myself then. Even in the work in progress mode, I wore a size Medium or Large.

In the hair department, I tried to style my hair on my own for the first time. I showered, towel dried my hair, slapped on some styling gel and tried to tame my curls and actually succeeded although on one side of my head. The other side was a struggle through and through, especially when the first lesson was to hold the dryer properly and then swing the brush in a more synchronised motion.

The next step is to successfully apply makeup. I never needed it - my complexion worked for me (the only thing I didn't need to fix) and my mom advised me to keep makeup to the minimum. I would only apply some lipstick or coloured lip balms and eyeliner or pencil. Now that I'm in my 30s, I realise more and more that I need some makeup especially when I'm going out for musicals or going somewhere fancy to eat. I want to look gorgeous. It will be one heck of a transformation for me.

And yeah, I'm still a girl who hasn't learned to do these things in her teens. If you look at an Indian 20 year old in Mumbai today, you'll never see anyone like what I've described of myself during those years. If they've got thinning hair, they've also got switches and stuff. But their genes are generally good or else they go back to the human factory and look like Barbies. They have exceptional makeup skills and six inch heels and you might not find a hose but then you're looking at the lot that travels in trains and buses. A minute in those and you wouldn't bear stockings either. But look at the girls zooming in and out of clubs, clacking their heels across a well-maintained street and walking only a short distance - from their cars to their destinations. They may drink like fish and end up puking on the sidewalk or their frenemies' dresses. But they look so darn good.

Power of Words

The kind of words you use, especially when you're criticising someone's work, makes such difference - harsh words especially fulfill their purpose of putting you down in ways that it takes some time for the constructive advice (if any) to sink in. And I'm not talking of face to face conversation, I'm talking about a review of my work by a school teacher, who is of course in the right to change anything she wants in my script since I am talking about her subject.

But I'm struck by the rudeness. In India, Mumbai among all others, schools specialise in strict disciplinary methods used to control a classroom that more often than not will have more than 40 kids. When I was a student, there was constant shouting and bullying that many teachers - often unskilled ones - would do when they weren't simply reading out the lessons to us. Very few over the years have offered me any constructive advice. The ones who did made me write better, read as many books from the library as I could, instead of picking the thinnest book and keeping it in the bag until the week was up and it had to be checked in. Many school teachers did not think twice before slamming a wooden ruler across a child's knuckles. Now, I don't know if they're reining in the impulse to do some physical harm but their words sure aren't.

My reviewer seems to scream down her criticism at me. Instead of something like "What are you trying to say?" it comes across like "What the hell do you mean?" I can understand not being able to control a retort when in a classroom and speaking it (although no one would expect a school teacher to say something like that), rather than sitting here reading a few lines and even if you're angry that I didn't know better than to write a dumb thing like that, you still have a few seconds to collect your thoughts and write a review comment. When you say things like "What did they do? Ate? Chewed? Gobbled?" I can almost hear the person saying "you moron" at the end. I don't mind the criticism, I'm no expert. I don't even mind the grammatical or language mistakes, if someone points them out I do get embarrassed and try not to do it again once I've corrected it. But the blurt out question review comment takes some time to sink in. The rest of her comments aren't civil either. Actually I don't expect anything other than just telling me what's wrong with it as plainly as possible. I just don't like when plain is like that first question which just put me in a not so good mood for the rest of the ride.

I have a tendency to be a little sensitive. And I realise that teachers are not always in the best of moods, horribly long hours, never-ending workload and not everyone is in it for the satisfaction - a classroom of some bratty kids would soon kill it. But I do realise that writing takes longer than just blurting it out. And fewer people realise that it can really do something it hadn't intended to do.

I'd done it myself when I'd criticised a friend for something that he did which hurt me but I wish I hadn't put it in an email. Or that I'd been more considerate than if I were talking to him. I just shot it off, reading it once to make sure he got the message but I was too hardheaded to accept the hurt that could come along with it. When it did come, I was amazed that he didnt see the point to my letter. When I got over my own selfishness, of course, the regret came and I wish I'd never done that. And even if you delete the email, it doesn't kill the bad feelings.

Or maybe I just need to develop a thicker skin....I dont know.