Encounters of a Fat Bride Read online

  SAMAH

  ENCOUNTERS OF A FAT BRIDE

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. About 600 days before the wedding

  2. 545 days before the wedding

  3. 539 days before the wedding

  4. 535 days before the wedding

  5. 528 days before the wedding

  6. 515 days before the wedding

  7. 425 days before the wedding

  8. 380 days before the wedding

  9. 369 days before the wedding

  10. 368 days before the wedding

  11. 356 days before the wedding

  12. 349 days before the wedding

  13. 350 days before the wedding

  14. 349 days before the wedding

  15. 347 days before the wedding

  16. 341 days before the wedding

  17. 320 days before the wedding

  18. 313 days before the wedding

  19. 295 days before the wedding

  20. 282 days before the wedding

  21. 281 days before the wedding

  22. 278 days before the wedding

  23. 277 days before the wedding

  24. 269 days before the wedding

  25. 255 days before the wedding

  26. 215 days before the wedding

  27. 180 days before the wedding

  28. 163 days before the wedding

  29. 159 days before the wedding

  30. 156 days before the wedding

  31. 149 days before the wedding

  32. 141 days before the wedding

  33. 135 days before the wedding

  34. Umpteen days after the wedding

  Epilogue

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  PENGUIN METRO READS

  ENCOUNTERS OF A FAT BRIDE

  A marketing professional by qualification, Samah is working towards a career in storytelling. A keen enthusiast of films, fashion, food and fitness, her ultimate goal is to travel the world. She lives in Mumbai with her best friend who also happens to be her husband.

  To all the fat brides out there—

  you’re going to rock your wedding!

  Prologue

  ‘It happened in her sleep,’ I overheard a woman, whom I did not immediately recognize, tell my mother. She nodded sympathetically, while I stood behind her quietly. Father had chosen not to come.

  ‘She lived a good life. We are lucky. She celebrated ninety-four birthdays.’

  ‘True, true,’ nodded Mother. Everyone around was in a sombre mood though no one was hysterical with grief.

  ‘Is that your daughter?’ the woman said, straining her neck to look past my mother as if I were completely hidden.

  ‘Yes, yes, this is my daughter Madhurima,’ Mother said, propelling me to the front. On cue, I smiled just enough to appear polite without seeming happy. It was a funeral after all.

  ‘My god, you’ve grown so big,’ came her reply. Yes, I had grown at least three sizes bigger since I may have last met her but I’m sure that’s not what she meant. Or maybe she did?

  ‘Is she married?’ she asked my mother as if I were mute, the fact that we were at a funeral irrelevant.

  ‘No, not yet, we are looking for a boy. Do you have anyone in mind?’ asked Mother, returning her enthusiasm. The two women launched into a detailed discussion as I slowly retreated into a corner.

  The inevitable had begun.

  1

  About 600 days before the wedding

  My first brush with wedding-dom was long before I actually got married. Family friends and relatives had started the annoying ‘You’re next’ nudges a while ago. Post my twenty-fifth birthday, whether it was a wedding in the family or a general outing where a quorum of my family was present under one roof, the topic of my potential marriage was brought up at least once. Suddenly from being ‘single’, I was termed ‘unmarried’. One aunt was even tactless enough to pitch her distant nephew to my mother at a family member’s funeral. They must have been desperate if they were asking for my hand.

  Realistically speaking, I would be no one’s first choice in an arranged marriage—a fact I had accepted several birthdays ago.

  You see, at 5’2’’, I weighed 93 kilos. Generally speaking, which boy would readily want to marry a girl like that? Especially, one he didn’t even know?

  So, one day, my maternal grandmother woke up with an agenda. As far back as I can remember, she had stayed with us. Legend has it that she had moved to our place to help Mother in the final weeks of her pregnancy. After I was born, no one ever felt the need for her to leave.

  ‘Bhushan!’ she summoned my father to the dining table. ‘Since you have no interest in your daughter’s future, I will take it upon myself to start thinking of her marriage,’ she declared. Mother and I remained mute spectators.

  ‘But we have started telling people to keep an eye out for a boy,’ Father protested weakly.

  ‘And you think a match will come along just like that? Knocking on your door? Every home we know of has at least one girl looking for a groom. No outsider is going to find a boy for your daughter. No one has the time. We need to think of other ways. I saw an advertisement of a matrimonial website in the newspaper. How about creating an account for Madhu?’ Grandma suggested.

  ‘Great idea,’ said Father. ‘I will set it up by the end of this week.’

  ‘This week? Oh, forget it! I will have it set up by the afternoon itself,’ Grandma said confidently. And knowing how determined she was, I didn’t doubt it.

  I was neither excited nor repulsed by the idea. Socially conditioned for the arranged marriage process since my cousin’s recent arranged marriage, I knew I had it coming.

  When you don’t already have someone to marry and yet must get married, the alternative is finding a match either through a known source or with the help of the internet.

  Word had spread among our near and dear ones but we hadn’t found any suitable takers yet. In the last few weeks, my parents had realized that this was a tougher responsibility than they had reckoned, mainly because I was overweight. A matrimonial website was not the preferred route for my parents, but they felt they needed to increase the chances of finding a match. And what easier way than tricking people by hiding my largeness behind an electronic medium?

  The next step—a profile of ‘Kumari Madhurima Pandey’ (yours truly) was craftily created on shubhshaadi.com. If my name didn’t already make me sound like someone who is at least forty, then adding ‘Kumari’ to it surely did the trick, even though it was added to signify my singlehood.

  ‘It’s done, it’s done!’ declared my grandma victoriously a little after dinner that evening. Without showing much eagerness, I quietly slipped into my room and quickly logged on to the said website to check my grandmother’s doing.

  There were a few other profiles of the same name, surprisingly, and they were all bad, but mine surely beat them all.

  Only my face, which didn’t immediately give my size away, was put up in the profile picture—an obvious move. A few generic details like age and height were listed, along with a description of me that read: ‘Lovely, sweet girl. Fair complexion. Big eyes, healthy figure, heavy chest, long hair. Respectful, graduate.’

  I held my breath for a few seconds after reading this. I was shocked at my grandma’s description of me. Her recent adeptness at using the computer was inspiring but the description infuriated me.

  I refreshed the page six times to believe that the words ‘heavy chest’ were actually written and not a figment of my imagination. The words did not vanish and will continue to haunt me for the rest of my life.

  Offended, I stormed into Grandma’s room fo
r a confrontation, but couldn’t accuse her of anything because the topic was out of my comfort zone. When she eventually learned what had upset me, she laughed and patted me on the shoulder, offering advice.

  She tried her best to explain that we had to highlight features and qualities of mine that would attract prospective grooms. I didn’t know ‘big breasts’ were a quality. When I countered her, saying we would get offers from perverts, she retorted, ‘Even the best and most saintly of men like big breasts.’ I didn’t have any rebuttal to that and was too surprised at having such a conversation with my grandmother! However, the awkwardness did not end there.

  ‘You know your grandfather and I also got married via a newspaper ad,’ she said proudly. Of course, I knew that! It was a well-known and oft-repeated tale in my family. The newspaper ad route used to be the most common one in that era.

  ‘Do you know what his newspaper ad said?’

  Even if I had known, I was expected to say ‘no’, so I obediently obliged.

  ‘Well, one of the requirements listed in your grandfather’s ad was that the bride must be big busted,’ Grandma said, blushing. My jaw dropped. Had I heard it right?

  The anecdote came as a shock, hilarious to an extent and disturbing to another. Grandma was looking nostalgically at grandfather’s photo on the wall as if this was something to remember him fondly for. It was, well, creepy, to say the least.

  My late grandfather was a well-known scholar of his time. I could never have imagined this side of his personality. Grandma said it was not uncommon for men to ask for well-endowed brides. In fact, mothers and sons of her time discussed such things with ease. I didn’t know what to make of this, but didn’t dwell on it much.

  After the discussion with my grandmother, I went back to my room to take another look at my profile but could not overcome the disastrous and misleading description. If all my swollen-looking body parts had to be mentioned, then my nose, arms, stomach, hips, thighs, fingers and toes ought to be on the list too.

  That night I could not sleep. And the next day I woke up with new-found motivation to pursue higher studies, preferably away from Gurgaon, (it wasn’t rechristened then) where we lived.

  The next day during lunch, I tactfully put forth an idea at the dining table.

  ‘Do you remember Dipti from my college?’ I asked nonchalantly. There was no Dipti in my college but it didn’t matter. Everyone pretended to remember my fictitious friend anyway.

  ‘I bumped into her the other day. She has just finished her MBA. Says her job prospects are doubling by the day. I was also thinking of doing an MBA,’ I lied. I’d had no intentions of studying further until the previous day.

  Quietly, I dipped my spoon into a bowl of curd, avoiding my grandmother’s eyes, but sensing she could see through my move.

  ‘Great idea,’ Father said proudly and that was it. I licked the spoon victoriously as Grandma’s face broke into a knowing smile.

  So while many of my girlfriends had decided to drop the idea of an MBA in order to get married, I decided to pursue an MBA so that my parents would drop the idea of marriage.

  A year or two away would do me well, I thought, though nothing would ever eradicate ‘heavy chest’ from my memory.

  2

  545 days before the wedding

  Several weeks had passed since I ‘successfully’ brought down what could have been the weirdest profile on any matrimonial website. Yes! I had thrown a fit; I had sworn never to marry if my profile on shubhshaadi.com was not taken down the very next day after it was created.

  But it wasn’t much later that I realized that my success in dodging the bullet was more temporary than I had imagined.

  Initially, everyone at home was surprised by my sudden decision to do an MBA. They had played it smart by supporting my plans of studying further, Grandma included, but their traditionalism had eventually resurfaced when they laid down the condition that I do any one-year-long course from the city itself.

  My family is stuck in an identity crisis. They want all the praises and credit for being a modern family, but their old-fashioned ways often catch up with them.

  Luckily, I wasn’t hell-bent on an MBA abroad. I wanted to study further for the sake of prolonging my singlehood. In a way, it was better for me to study in Gurgaon because I could then keep my job as a sales executive at ACM Motors. I had landed the job after graduating from Pearl University four years ago. But I didn’t tell my parents about this plan. I took full credit for sacrificing my wish for theirs. I eventually settled for a part-time MBA course at a college nearby and managing that with work meant I was doubly busy.

  Everyone at home could see that I had no time to spare those days. I thought I had silenced them on the marriage front, for a while at least, until I overheard them one day when I returned home earlier than usual. It was the middle of the week. I was supposed to have an evening lecture, which was called off at the last minute because my professor had contracted diarrhoea. He suffered the verbal kind perpetually.

  I let myself into the house with my set of keys. It was abnormally quiet in the living area for that time of the evening. Unsuspectingly, I filled myself a glass of water from the kitchen and sipped it as I walked towards my room. The silence of the house was broken by muffled voices behind closed doors. I stepped towards the source of the voices with the stealth of a cat.

  ‘We cannot meet them without her knowledge,’ I heard my father say. Carefully, I stuck my ear to the shut door.

  ‘It is just a meeting, baba. Why are you worrying so much? Think of it as a meeting with a friend,’ Grandma chipped in.

  So, that’s what it was! They were back to setting me up. I thought of barging in and confronting them at once but I stood glued to my spot, eavesdropping further.

  ‘He is not our friend, Ma. We all know the meeting is not casual. Everyone in the community knows he is in debt.’ Debt? My mind was racing. Who were they talking about?

  ‘Good people also suffer losses. I’m sure they are nice.’

  ‘What if we cannot meet their demands?’

  Debt? Demands? What the hell was going on? By now my interest was piqued.

  ‘Then we will know that the match cannot be arranged,’ Grandma countered. Such a mastermind she was, with an answer to everything.

  ‘But where is the guarantee that they will keep her happy once their financial issue is taken care of?’

  ‘There’s no guarantee at all, Bhushan. Madhu will have to win their hearts too.’

  Oh god! I had to win hearts? It was probably tougher than losing weight. The matchmaking was still going on in full swing, I realized. There was almost a year’s time till I finished my course but that hadn’t halted the hunt for my groom.

  Suddenly, I needed to spew out the water I had just downed. I wanted to scream at the so-called ‘adults’ in my family. Even my mother was in on this! Why were they so desperate? I couldn’t bear it any more. Surreptitiously, I went outside the house again.

  Pretending that I was just returning home, I rang the doorbell with more force than was required. Mother let me in. Once inside, I conducted myself as nonchalantly as possible.

  The three of them pretended as though there was nothing out of the ordinary. I put on a poker face as well. I had figured out that they were talking to some family from our community that was in financial distress. My father would compensate for my extra weight by paying off their debts and in return, they would accept me as their daughter-in-law.

  I was devastated. Did the burden of my weight mean that I would have to ‘buy’ myself a groom? Did being fat mean that my family would have to pay someone to marry me? How different was this from dowry? And what if I didn’t like the boy? Would I have the option of saying ‘no’ once they said ‘yes’? With a lot of difficulty, I managed to keep my tears in check. I didn’t want to cry in front of them. A part of me would not believe that my parents would ever force me to marry someone. But a part of me was frightened at the thought of this inde
bted family.

  I walked into my room after lying that I was exceptionally tired and feeling unwell. Grandma suggested I take a nap and I agreed.

  Once inside my room, I bolted the door and, with tearful eyes, jumped on the bed like a typical, distressed Hindi film heroine. The bed shook under my weight. Real life problems, I tell you!

  That night I did not sleep well. My mind had gone into overdrive. I wanted to confront my family about this new plan. But I eventually decided that I would not bring up the topic at all. After all, according to them I didn’t know about it. So unless they came up to me with the subject, I would pretend that I knew nothing at all. Who knew how it would turn out? Maybe they would never speak to me about it. Maybe that family wouldn’t want our money. Maybe the guy would turn out to be fantastic. Maybe I would wake up weighing fifty-five kilos. Anything could happen.

  I decided to wait and see what was in store.

  3

  539 days before the wedding

  It was close to EOD at work when I got a call from Anu, my closest friend from my schooldays. I had few friends and an almost non-existent social life. All my friends were girls (convent school and being overweight are a disastrous combination. One keeps you away from boys, the other keeps boys away from you). Some of my friends were from the colony I resided in, some from school, whom I was still in touch with, some from college and some from work. I also had a few male acquaintances from work.

  ‘Madhu, come home as soon as possible,’Anu said excitedly. It seemed like an emergency call but not a panic-stricken one. More like a call of good news.

  ‘Okay, but what’s happening?’

  ‘IT is finally happening, Madhu! It’s happening,’ Anu cried. The call was a refreshing change on a mundane day at work.

  Now, my girlfriends and I were all at that age and at that phase of our lives where marriage, wedding jewellery and hairstyles, bridal clothes, boys in general, potential matches and relationships, were a part of our regular chats. I, however, was an exception in such chats. I was the last to add anything worthwhile to such topics and mainly only received updates. Someone had just been engaged. Someone had just had a one-night stand. Someone was looking for a boy and things like that. The topic of Anu’s marriage had been going on for a while. The hunt for a groom had begun only a few weeks ago and from the minute she had decided to get married, there was a flurry of proposals.