Main apni favorite hoon!

Hey, you are so thin”, “woah, that’s a sudden weight gain”, “aren’t you a Punjabi?, and aren’t they like super fair”, “Why don’t you put this paste on your face it will reduce your blemishes”,

“Um no offense but your nose looks like a pakoda”. 

I think you as a reader might have received some of these lines, well me too. The funny part is I received these sentences from my close ones, maybe they were looking out for me, but I was young and they were hurtful. I would think that what are these beauty standards. If everyone looked like everyone what sense will it make?

My parents would cheer me up by saying – “Tanvvi the outer beauty is not it, you are so great by heart that is a beauty in itself”.

To my parents I was the most beautiful girl, they still sing an old song “Mere Ghar Aayi Ek Nanhi Pari”-  we are blessed with a beautiful small girl. But these lines were not going through to me as the others people’s comments came out stronger to me. 

When I moved to Pune I met so many people who had zero complexes on how they looked, my father would push me to attend self-development classes. I would still feel hesitant, my friends pushed me too to become a better version of myself. But the most important thing was “loving myself” still wasn’t happening. I don’t remember who but someone had told me “If you don’t love yourself, you will never be able to get rid of this shallow feeling”. I made this line as my brain tattoo.

Sometimes I feel the timeline of these incidents is like a road map, where ever I would fall or get stuck, there would be an anchor to pull me out. This time, I was educating myself about curly hair and there is such a big community of curly heads. My whole community of “Moody but curly” was reached out by dove shampoo and conditioner. They wanted to do a campaign for curly hair people, I was blown by that opportunity. I mean 120 people including girls and boys shared our story of having curly hair. This campaign was just a starting point, then I was reached out by a community “natural is beautiful”, they hosted a campaign where we celebrated each skin tone, every size, and every face texture. It was so raw and pure. 

I always say I am on a roller coaster which is only going high up but this time it went too high that I got diagnosed with PCOD, and started getting fat, from 45kgs I was 67kgs. It was major and suddenly people started calling me fat. My uncle said I am giving competition to sumo fighters with my weight gain. It was again reminded of that being called the DUFF. But  then one day I was getting ready for a party and my pants tore, I realized how fat I had become and I was just laying on my bathroom floor, my concerned brother picked me up and called my mother, and I still don’t remember what I spoke to my mom. 

My anchor came again to pull me out, the brain tattoo came splashing in front of me, I got dressed and went to the party.I am still learning and will be learning about myself, but I have understood yes I go to that overthinking phase and bad phase

. But my willpower never went down and I want to make it stronger and will never stop feeling powerful emotionally and physically. And like I said earlier I will always have anchors helping me. I end this piece by just saying “Main apni favorite hoon!”.