Tag: vrushali lad

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‘Pravin never discussed the Pramod Mahajan episode with me’

Sarangi Mahajan is slowly making peace with the present – but there may never be a respite from the past.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

It was a scandal that rocked the nation in 2006. Pramod Mahajan, architect of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) still-used slogan ‘India Shining’ and the party’s probable PM candidate, was shot at by younger brother Pravin, at the former’s Worli residence. 13 days later, he succumbed to his injuries in hospital, and with his passing, Pravin, from being an unknown entity till that point, became the killer whose motive nobody could understand.

Two years ago, to complete an almost eerie state of affairs, Pravin passed away in hospital after a severe brain haemorrhage sent him into an 83-day coma. But the questions still remain. Why did he shoot his own brother, the man who he idolised? How was his wife, Sarangi, connected to the incident? Why did he surrender to the police, give a detailed account of his crime, but later maintain that he did not shoot Pramod?

More to the point, why did things come to such a pass in one of the most powerful families in the country?

I ask Sarangi these questions at the Mahajans’ modest home in Naupada, Thane. She is all friendliness and grace, instantly agreeing to this interview and inviting me to her home. “I don’t hold back any more,” she says, when I tell her I am surprised by her readiness to speak about what is probably the ghastliest chapter in her life. “Our lives were laid bare the moment it (the shooting) happened. Nothing is private now.”

At the centre of it all

December used to be a special month in the Mahajan household. December 4 is, as per the Hindu calendar, Pravin Mahajan’s birthday. Two days later came his and Sarangi’s wedding anniversary. And on December 22, is his twins Kapil and Sumati’s birthday. I met Sarangi on December 4, and asked her about coping with life six years after the incident that sent several skeletons in the Mahajan closet tumbling out. I am replaying several opinions about Sarangi in my head…it’s been said that she isn’t as simple as she lets on, that she consistently sticks to a script. But her answers don’t sound rehearsed. And she is charming enough to ask me, when I take her pictures on my camera, to send her a few “good ones” to upload on Facebook.

“You know, six years after Pramodji’s death, we celebrated Diwali for the first time this year. There was just too much going on before this…the court cases, prison visits, the publication of Pravin’s book (Majha Album), and then Pravin passed away in 2010. But we are slowly getting back to our lives, though everything has changed,” she says.

I suppose everyone expects her to be a weepy widow, and a bitter one, considering that her name often cropped up when the shooting was still fresh in public memory. Rumours suggested that her political ambitions, coupled with his simple lifestyle away from his brother’s meteoric rise in Indian politics, may have pushed Pravin to the edge. Sarangi has also been linked with the controversy in several unsavoury ways.

When things went wrong

Pramod was the proverbial father to his siblings, Sarangi says, but as his prominence within the BJP grew, his attitude towards  Pravin changed. “We began to understand that he and his family didn’t think we were at par with them. Pravin began to feel that his brother was embarrassed by him. He resented the fact that Pramod’s PA would set an appointment for the two brothers to meet, that Pramod didn’t return his calls. Soon, my husband stopped attending functions within the family, though he never stopped me and the kids from going. The last function I attended was Poonam’s (Pramod’s daughter) wedding in 2002. Pravin didn’t attend even that.”

She speaks fondly of Pramod bhavji, of how he took care of Pravin, helped him get a job at Reliance, even earmarked a flat close to his own at Worli. “The two were very close. Pravin was very knowledgeable about politics, so they got along well. When we were newly married, we used to live together in a house that the BJP had given Pramod. I loved living under the same roof as the family, because I come from a joint family myself. But he soon told us to look for a place of our own – he didn’t want the party to ask uncomfortable questions.”

The Party, she says, became an underlying theme in all their lives. “People thought: Pramod Mahajan is their family member, they must be rolling in money, he must be getting everything done for them. But look at my house, this is how we have always lived,” she gestures towards her simply furnished home. “Pravin never used his brother’s name, never tried to benefit from the Party’s connections. His motto was simple – live within your means, have enough for a few simple enjoyments, but don’t get into the whole ‘status’ thing, because it becomes difficult to maintain a rich lifestyle,” she says.

April 22, 2006

But what drove him to shoot at his own brother, then surrender to the police?

Her not surprising stand on the issue of the incident – she and her lawyers have maintained this throughout his trial and beyond – is that her husband did not shoot Pramod Mahajan. “He couldn’t have done it. Even at home, if he spoke harshly or did anything out of anger, he would feel bad about it later. But after shooting Pramodji, he didn’t show the slightest remorse. If he had done it, the guilt would have consumed him.”

So what really happened, I ask. She says, “I asked him this question several times. He would just say, ‘Let that subject be. Let’s talk about other things.’ I even asked our lawyer (Harshad Ponda) about Pravin’s statements in court (the trial had taken place in-camera, so details are not yet known) but the lawyer also didn’t give me details.”

She recalls how she first reacted to the news with shock, then dismay, then with a collapse. “I couldn’t believe that Pravin had done such a thing.” Then came the backlash. Till then, not many people knew that the famous Pramod Mahajan’s brother lived in Thane. “Suddenly, the media was everywhere. The police would come and go at all times. The family, and those we thought were our friends severed all ties with us. If you switched on the news, all you could see was the Pramod v/s Pravin issue. It was a nightmare.” Thrust into the spotlight, she says, she and her children were left to deal with the ‘criminal’ tag that would be associated with Pravin from the moment he pumped the first bullet into Pramod.

Learning the ropes

After Pravin’s arrest, the family’s bank accounts were frozen and their car was seized. “I had never used public transport; we had a car with a driver and there was never any need to use the train or bus,” she remembers. “Suddenly, I had no money. My brothers pitched in, gave me an ATM card to their accounts. I had to arrange for lawyers, try and get Pravin all the help he needed. I learnt things from scratch – how to travel by train from Thane to CST, take the bus, meet with lawyers, present myself in front of a judge, and then manage the home…it was all a tremendous learning experience.”

She remembers how her children, who were only 16 years old then, grew up overnight. “They learnt to deal with negative comments. I’m sure it wasn’t easy. They’ve both been good at studies, and despite the trauma in their personal lives, they passed their Class 12 exams with good marks. A lot of people expected them to do badly, expected us to fall apart. But we survived.”

Through all this, she lost all her friends. “I used to attend kitty parties. I had a big circle of friends. But none of them have contacted me in these six years. I help in social initiatives in the city (she recently participated in the Atre Katta’s boycott of autos and taxis) so I meet a lot of interesting people. I even have a court case going on against Pramodji’s family in Osmanabad (for ancestral land that the other siblings and Sarangi have staked a claim to) so I meet our relatives there. But I don’t have any friends in my age group any more.”

She goes back to describing the time she collapsed in the aftermath of what Pravin had done. “He was gone, and I was afraid to step out. For two months I locked myself up at home. But the day I learnt that Rahul (Pramod’s son) had collapsed with a drug overdose, I got the strength to stand up again.” She clarifies, “I have nothing against Rahul. He is a genuinely nice boy. But till that point, all fingers had been pointing at us, at our life, at how Pravin had ruined an innocent family. What happened with Rahul was unfortunate, but I was relieved that the world would finally know where the actual problem was. And it wasn’t with us.”

The kids are all right

Her son, Kapil, walks in from work at this point. He listens to our conversation for a while, then says, “The incident showed us who our true friends were. I understood how courts worked, how to scrutinise medical and legal documents. I even telephoned them (Pramod’s family) several times, but they never spoke to us.

I feel every young person should go through the trauma we went through, because it builds character. If my uncle was still alive, I would have been secure in the knowledge that he would get me a job somewhere, that I didn’t need to prove myself because he would help. But my sister and I did well on our own. We finished our studies, I got a job on my own merit. I understand what the thrill of achievement is; I wouldn’t know about it if nothing had changed.” And continuing in the tradition of his paternal grandfather and father, Kapil is also a teacher – he teaches English and Business Communication at a town college.

Sarangi says that her children have bravely faced a world that has branded their father a murderer. “My children turned out fine. They respect their mother, they work hard, they are good human beings. I never had to worry about them going wayward.”

Dealing with the family

Sarangi admits that ‘the Mahajan family’ has been an important constant in her life. “I used to be an ABVP worker, and I would have loved to continue my work after marriage. But the women in this family have never been allowed to work, and later, we had to mind ourselves constantly because we had to keep up Pramod’s image. Then my children were growing up and I was with them all the time. But in 2004, I wanted to return to politics, and Pravin was fine with it. To this end, I had started doing work in the locality. And then 2006 happened.”

She says that these days, she attends several functions and meetings by city-based NGOs. “I never refuse an invitation, because I get to meet so many people and know what society is thinking. I am busy with Pravin’s book, which is doing very well. I am also running from pillar to post trying to get the Rs 7,00,000 compensation that the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission awarded me (after Nashik jail authorities were found to have been negligent with Pravin’s medication when he was incarcerated there), and there’s the court case at Osmanabad. Plus, I want to get my daughter married off next year.”

Does she still harbour political ambitions? “Almost every party offered me a ticket to contest elections, but the time was not right. It still isn’t. We are settling in slowly. My children are now independent and I don’t need to be at home constantly. Yes, life changed dramatically, and Pravin is no more. But he is still with us – in the discipline he insisted on at home, in the way all of us are leading our lives in an upright manner.”

And will she ever reconcile with the Mahajans? “I have always wanted a reconciliation, but they don’t. I have lost count of the number of times I have tried to speak to them, meet them. Tell me, what was our fault in what happened? They have had enough opportunity to get in touch with us, and they are welcome to do so. I hope that at least the children will get along some day.”

(Mahajan family and Pramod Mahajan pictures courtesy outlookindia.com and thehindu.com) 

 

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Patrakar types

Palghar for President!

We’re glad Palghar is on the map, and for putting us all in our places through an innocent Facebook post.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

I am a little baffled. Since when did political parties log on to Facebook? And if they have been logging on, are their FBs different from ours? I ask because if I see a post I dislike or disagree with, I ignore it or say what I didn’t like about it. Just last week somebody posted a picture of Lady Gaga that I did not need to see. But my FB did not whisper to me to go the police against my friend for hurting my sentiments (and my eyes). May be that’s why I don’t understand politics – my FB wall is very lame.

What baffles me even more, and this is very patronising of me, is that it took Palghar, Thane district, Maharashtra, to put the issue of Internet checks and balances on the map. Little old smug city girl me has always believed that the country’s biggest movements would always originate from Mumbai or the other metros. Not that I’m complaining, of course – Palghar’s young ones haven’t exactly been treated well by the police and the political parties, what with two of them already arrested for posting content against the Shiv Sena, and a third in trouble for dissing Raj Thackeray on Facebook.

If I was a Palghar kid with access to Facebook, I would open several accounts and slang out every political party I know, just to see what happens. No, I am not about to do it, because I am not a Palghar kid (see what I did there?) I think I know what would happen – if you think intolerance towards criticism of their party or its chiefs is strictly a Shiv Sena or MNS thing, you’ve got another think coming.

I am very proud of Palghar. Palghar and its youngsters have shown us the way. In this day and age, it is not a mean achievement to have a Twitter hashtag created after your name, or to have people outrage over your arrest as they sip their coffee in their air-conditioned offices. The day the two girls were arrested, somebody created a fake Shaheen Dhada account as well.

Sure, some ignorant ones are still asking, “Hey, where IS Palghar?”, but they’re also ‘liking’ others’ call for support, aren’t they? And whether we remain unsure of Palghar’s geographical location or not, aren’t we all secretly thrilled that we can now write and post things with some impunity about the Party That Must Not Be Named, because we can cite those two girls every time somebody threatens us with arrest? Of course, we can’t keep shouting, “Shaheen Dhada! Rinu Srinivasan!” while a mob ransacks our office or clinic, but at least we now have something to shout out in our defence.

My vote of thanks goes to Palghar. For giving us a worthy event to include in this year’s list of exciting events. For shaking us out of our slumber, induced by some weird idea that nobody outside Mumbai has access to social media. For proving that the Shiv Sena, wherever it may be, is a delightfully predictable political party. And for its two young girls, for innocently saying the things that we were thinking but did not have the courage to think out loud for so long.

P.S.: Where is Palghar?

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

(Picture courtesy jaimaharashtranews.com)

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Patrakar types

Don’t wanna miss a thing

Why do papers and channels think people are interested in knowing who broke a news story ahead of the competition?
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

When I was employed with newspapers full time, the biggest issue I faced was not that I hadn’t properly expressed myself in a story I wrote for the day’s edition, or that I hadn’t packed in enough detail. No, the one big issue, and it was the first thing that struck me when I woke up in the morning, was:

“Have I missed a story?”

Most reporters wake up and check their phones for messages and missed calls – with thoroughly guilty consciences – from potentially irate editors. The best feeling in the world is to know that the office did not call or text while you slept, and that the worst that happened to you was that you won the Coca Cola Lottery again this week.

The feeling of contentment lasts but a few seconds. Reporters then leap at the newspapers – of which, each serious journalist’s house will have at least seven, sometimes in more than two languages – and study the news sections as if preparing for a pop quiz. And while they’re sitting in a sea of newspapers, they’ll also check the TV news. I know reporters who read newspapers, hold the TV remote in one hand and their BBs in the other, and simultaneously check the news feeds on all three.

This enthusiasm serves three functions – one, you know what the competition has published and you haven’t; two, you know if your story really was ‘exclusive’ or not; and three, you can mentally prepare your arguments for and against a certain item in a rival publication or channel (“But sir, what do you mean ‘Why don’t we have that story? YOU told me not to write it!”)

In the event that a reporter has missed a story, a new drama unfolds. He has to first pick up the phone and confirm if the rival’s news is true or a random tweet. If true, he has to get to work and track a good follow up to the story. Meanwhile, he has to count to 100 while his boss tells him, in 10 different ways, that he is an incompetent ass. After that, he has to promise himself never to miss a story again.

I used to be part of these shenanigans myself, and when I would tell my mum about it (my mum is this erudite, painfully analytical woman who has often given me stories) about how I missed a story and what a big loss it was to my paper, she would shoot me a look that said: So?

Over the years, you learn to calm down about missing a story, because in the larger scheme of things, you find that people don’t really care if you missed reporting about a factory opening in Ulhasnagar, or if an aged actor was admitted to hospital for an ingrown toenail. But try telling that to your editor. The merest suggestion of, “But how is this important to our readers…?” has made many an editor foam at the mouth and throw furniture at the staff.

Similarly, readers do not care if you were the only one in the country to report something that the others didn’t. So claims of ‘We were the first to report that…’ or ‘Remember, you read it here first,’ only open you up to ridicule. Again, reminding an editor of this is akin to stealing birthday cake from the birthday boy’s plate.

People only want to be told the news truthfully and completely, in a way that doesn’t insult their intelligence. Readers can see right through a plug, they are not impressed with claims of ‘The Home Ministry took this action after our report’ and if you want to see a reader’s blood pressure shoot, put a chaddi-bra ad on the paper’s front page. While papers and channels are playing Hits And Misses all day, their readers are reading the line ‘We told you first!’ and thinking, So?

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

(Picture courtesy www.thehindu.com)

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The Internet as therapist

Why are we increasingly seeking validation for our actions from strangers online? Whatever happened to dealing with personal crises, personally?
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

Early this week, Twitter users in Mumbai were outraged and astounded by the story of a Mumbai-based writer who blogged about physical abuse at the hands of her boyfriend. The post went viral in minutes, and several Twitter users rallied around the girl and heaped suitable abuse and condemnation on the perpetrator of the beatings, punchings and head-on-wall slammings that the girl said she had been subjected to. For five days, the story played out on Twitter over and over again, with almost all the junta saluting the girl’s courage for speaking out against abuse, and several more promising support and help.

She did not go to the police for personal reasons.  Meanwhile, the boyfriend suspended his Facebook account and went silent on Twitter. There were a few who felt that the matter should not have been aired on a public platform like Twitter at all – that it was a matter to be solved between two adults, privately. Those who expressed this opinion were quickly attacked by the outraged majority, with such analogies as, ‘That is like saying murder should be solved between the murderer and the victim’.

A friend of mine was telling me about a woman she barely knows, who uploads a new picture of herself every day on Facebook, and who recently took an opinion poll on whether her FB ‘friends’ would like to see pictures of her actually giving birth to her son. My friend and I took respective mini Twitter and Facebook sanyaas with these goings-on, moving on to solving our little crises on our own, without a lot of strangers looking in and offering support and encouragement.

It’s not like I don’t want support, it’s just that I don’t need it from a bunch of people I don’t know.

I’m not trivialising anybody’s crises, least of all domestic abuse – it is a sad evil that must be spoken against and more importantly, acted upon – and I’m not getting into the whole ‘Haw! How can he beat?’ debate either. I actually couldn’t care less because I don’t know either the beater or the beatee. Yes, the issue bothers me, just like paedophilia and marital rape bother me. But I am surprised that we are increasingly turning to our computer screens for solutions to our problems.

We are buoyed by retweets from perfect strangers. We are excited by glowing reviews of a new pic we just uploaded on FB. It thrills us to know that complete strangers are recommending our blog posts, tweets and status messages to the world. If we break up with our partners, we tell the virtual world about it and wait for commiserations. We even live tweet the births of our babies (and open Twitter accounts for them). And when people we don’t even know write back to us saying, “I know just how you feel…” we are quietly proud of how someone out there ‘gets’ us.

It seems that we are increasingly looking for validation from an unknown mass of people, and what’s more, looking to be liked. Criticism from unknown quarters stings us. The virtual unknown is important to us, sometimes to the exclusion of family and friends. We’re having dinner with our families, but not participating in the discussion happening over our heads because we’re tweeting about what a good time we’re having at our family dinner. We’re out drinking with friends, but we want to offer immediate proof of what a good time we’re having, so we put up pictures of us pulling monkey faces while we show our drink glasses to the camera. Then the next morning, we explain how those pics were not supposed to be uploaded, that we didn’t know what we were doing because we were so drunk, lolz.

It seems to me that while we’re reaching a lot of people today than we used to, we’re actually unloading on the virtual world a bit more than we used to as well. We’re so connected, the lines between personal and private are not lines any more, but mere specks. Everything is up for evaluation – our personal crises, our major and minor tragedies, our trivialities and successes. And though our world view is much wider in scope as well, we’re expecting strangers to agree with us, to hold our hands through our decisions, to tell us what to do.

I don’t know about you, but if I need help, praise or support, I’ll get it from people I know. The Internet is too creepy a therapist.

Vrushali Lad is a freelance journalist who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.

 

 

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‘It scares me when people retweet my cartoons’

We chat with DNA’s chief cartoonist Manjul on cartooning in today’s times, the journalism space, and coming to work without a clue.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

In the early 1990s, a class 11 boy went to the Dainik Jagran offices in Kanpur and applied for a cartoonist’s job. “I had no idea that nobody is there at newspaper offices at 12 noon. There were just a few features guys there and I met the features editor. She asked me to leave my work there and they would get back to me.”

He returned the very next day for a reply. “I was determined to be a newspaper cartoonist when I was in class 8. But the editor told me she couldn’t employ me. She had shown my work to one of the artists at the newspaper, who felt that my ‘lines had no power’ and stuff like that – which may have been true, because I was very young, and my drawing used to be terrible when I was younger. I was disappointed, but to my good luck, I bumped into Rajani Gupta (one of the owners) on my way out, and I had met her only the previous day for the first time. I told her that I hadn’t got the job, but she got it for me,” he grins.

Now, over two decades later, he is the chief cartoonist at Daily News & Analysis (DNA), a position he has held since the paper’s inception in Mumbai in 2005. Manjul, the only part of his name he is willing to give (even his visiting card reads ‘Manjul, Chief cartoonist’), says he was hired because DNA’s owners wanted to ‘revive the dying art of cartooning’. “I feel that DNA has done journalism a big service by carrying cartoons daily,” the 40-year-old says, explaining that in 2005, the city’s newspapers, even the The Times of India, did not have cartoons in their pages. “Only Mid Day had cartoons by Ponnappa and Morparia. DNA introduced cartoons under ‘Nobody’s business’ in its DNA Money edition. It was a great chance for me to be part of the biggest product launch since independence and have a dedicated cartoon slot in the paper’s pages,” he says with quiet pride.

Drawing on life

Manjul’s parents were unhappy with his chosen vocation, but that didn’t stop him from working at a newspaper. “I was studying Science. They thought I was ruining my future, a very middle-class concern. My father would say that I would make more money selling potatoes! Later, I ‘ruined’ my brother’s career – he followed me into journalism!” he laughs.

He didn’t have a background in drawing – “I think I got it from my mother, whose drawing was very good” – and at his first job, he quickly learnt that repetition honed his skill. “We didn’t have computers in those days, so if there was any redoing to be done, you had to do the cartoon all over again. But on paper or on the screen, I find that drawing again and again only makes the cartoon better,” he explains.

Though thrilled with the chance to work with a behemoth like Dainik Jagran , he realised that he didn’t want to be stuck doing comic strips. “I wanted to do serious political cartoons. Soon I moved to a daily newspaper for a while, before going to a newly-launched paper in Lucknow in 1992.” He loved his time in a new city, learning from and mingling with several senior journalists.

“I understood that you can’t become a cartoonist just by drawing well. You must assess what you are trying to say, and your reader must instantly grasp your meaning.” But he had to quit the job in 1996. “I was offered a bribe for not drawing against chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav. I ignored it for a while, till one day my editor told me not to draw a cartoon against him, when I decided to move to Delhi.”

Computers and cartoons

He was probably among the first cartoonists in the country to draw on a computer. “Dainik Jagran got a computer before everyone else. I familiarised myself with it, working on an extremely slow vector drawing software. But you couldn’t control everything on it, and drawing by hand was faster,” he laughs. “Later in Lucknow, when the paper became a colour paper, I used my skills to draw by hand, scan the drawing and colour it by hand again.

When I first told the processing team that we could do the colouring work at the office, they didn’t believe me. I persisted, saying that they could make separate CMYK plates, and when they tried it, the colours came out well,” he explains.

 English press, ahoy!

Manjul was lucky to get a break into the mainstream English press when he bagged a cartoonist’s job at The Financial Express in 1996, where Prabhu Chawla was the editor. “It was a big deal to come from the Hindi press and get a job with a big English paper. A year later, I moved to India Today after he (Chawla) moved there. They were technically the most advanced, and I got the chance to use a stylus there for the first time.”

The only difference between using a paper and a stylus was the hand-eye synchronisation with the latter. “But the stylus saves a lot of time,” he says.

Throughout all of this, he was learning just how impactful his job could be. “Observation is a big part of a cartoonist’s job. I still struggle every day, it’s never easy. I come to work with no ideas. Often I find that five cartoonists are saying the same thing, in slightly different ways. The best cartoons make fun of somebody without him realising that you are making fun of him.”

Working and networking

Journalists, whether reporters or cartoonists, must work for their readers. “A journalist is only as good or bad as their editor,” he says. Another consideration is the reach and speed of social networking in disseminating information. “Every time people retweet my cartoon, it scares me. It puts additional pressure on me to top my last effort,” he says. “But I must point out that social networking gives people a reference point. To understand a cartoon, you must be aware of the background information. Social networking has actually made my job easier, it makes so much information available that you are never out of ideas,” he explains.

He feels that Facebook and Twitter help him gauge readers’ thought processes, but he doesn’t want to be addicted. “So many editors are constantly tweeting. When do they read their papers, when do they prepare their editions? Also, so many print journalists tweet some really interesting things, but their published stories are rubbish. You can’t take social networking so seriously,” he says.

His story today

He says that the exposure with Hindi newspapers is tremendous, with higher circulation and readership, but he has been happier with editors in the English press. “An editor’s job is to pull you back when your cartoon is too harsh, and I welcome that. Freedom of expression comes with certain boundaries.”

He adds, “Cartoons are art. Art ceases to exist when something is created just to irritate somebody. Cartooning is not about insulting or unnecessarily provoking somebody. Bad cartoons are those that insult, that are created just to prove that you can draw whatever you please,” he says.

Manjul has also written opinion pieces, but only when he is unable to convey the depth of his feeling in cartoons, like after Mario Miranda died. “Also, I wrote a piece when I visited Jaitapur. If I don’t draw a cartoon, I become uneasy. But I regret not travelling more in India, not knowing a lot of things. Right now, this is too exciting for me, so I am not going to take a vacation till 2015,” he grins.

 

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Patrakar types

Who’re you calling fat?

Rolls of fat all along the abdomen and jiggly arms – is this your definition of a curvy Indian woman? So really thin is healthy, I suppose?
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

I am seriously annoyed when women at the gym call me thin. This is not false modesty. I am genuinely irritated when I get called thin. Because that observation is generally followed by this statement I am still not able to understand – “Why do you need to exercise? You are so thin!”

And this pronouncement is followed by a quick, sad little look at their bulging abs and/or thunder thighs.

I am not thin. I am underweight. I am 33 years old and I weigh lower than I used to when I was in college. But people think that because I have a thin waist and because my jeans sit loosely on me, I don’t need to exercise. So why do I need to exercise? Because there’s a history of diabetes in the family. At the wrong side of 30, I don’t want to develop cardiac disease, or have painful joints, or something worse. But there is still the problem of being underweight.

Then there is the other extreme comment, generally from women who are overweight but who possess some insane confidence that makes them think that they are not fat, but curvy. They talk of Vidya Balan and Beyonce. Sometimes, in some dim moment of despair, they think they should lose a little weight. But mostly, they seek consolation from pictures of pudgy celebrities, who openly declare that they celebrate their curves, and that they would never go under the knife because they love their bodies, blah blah blah.

Hey, please love your body, wobbly bits and all. Also love it if you’re eating as much as you should, but you’re still rail thin. But do something about that extra fat you’re carting around, and don’t pretend to love it. There’s nothing to love about something that gives you cardiac problems, that puts you on the path to diabetes, that makes you heavier on your knees than you should be. And there is nothing sexy about carrying fat around, just like there is nothing remotely beautiful about being bones in a skirt.

After a recent interview that a now-rotund Vidya Balan gave to an entertainment paper, about how ‘Fat is sexy’ (she can get away with saying that, she has a National Award backing her sentiment) and which Kareena Kapoor rebutted two days later with the bitchy comment, “There’s nothing sexy about being fat. Anybody who says so is just lying,” I saw pictures of Vidya in the same paper yesterday. Lying or not, Vidya Balan is the poster girl for the wrong kind of pudginess – why are we celebrating a woman who is simply bursting out of her backless sari blouses? Is it just me, or does anyone else think that she is deliberately not changing out of her saris – is there another dress option for her left? I’m not saying she would look ugly in a dress or a pair of trousers – I am just saying that that is probably what she herself thinks.

I don’t think fat is ugly. I think skinny is ugly. But there’s a need to choose the right role model for your body type. And what’s more, whether you choose Vidya or Kate Moss, you still need to exercise and eat right. That’s what I’m doing. Because underweight is just as dangerous as overweight.

Vrushali Lad is a freelance reporter who has spent several years pitching story ideas to reluctant editors. Once, she even got hired while doing so.  

(Picture courtesy www.healthmeup.com)

 

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