Open letter to TOI: OMG, Deepika Padukone's cleavage

Dear TOI,

I am wondering why men and women are so furious with your story stating: ‘Omg, Deepika Padukone’s cleavage.” I am sure you are regretting that you didn’t talk about her legs instead: ‘Omg, Deepika Padukone's long legs.’ Everyone would have loved that. Some portals would have even got a cue and uploaded stories like: Ten things only women with long legs can understand. Or: How to date a woman with long legs.

You see, the problem was not with your remark: it was with the body part you chose.

For us, breasts are a personal topic, a secret best not spoken about. When our daughters start to ‘grow’ we teach them how to sit properly, talk politely, laugh softly, dance appropriately, walk gracefully, eat & cook healthy, work passionately, love endlessly and care boundlessly. We introduce them to their five senses, legs & hands and back & stomach. And knowingly and unknowingly we ‘fail’ to acknowledge their breasts. It is personal.

When we feel our teenager needs a bra, we just hand over one to her. Her world crashes down. No more bouncy. If her boobs are allowed to play freely, she can damage the world. Does she know that? Of course she doesn’t. Do we tell her, ofcourse not. It is personal.

Our little girl doesn’t even know that the word ‘boobs’ denotes flirtatiousness, that ‘breasts’ are restricted to brochures about ‘cancer’ that most people type ‘bust’ instead of ‘busy’ when in a hurry (T and Y are provocatively placed next to each other on the keypad) and that grown-ups giggle inwardly when she says ‘titbits’.

When she grows up and one day walks up to us and tells that a man tried to feel her breasts at a railway station, we ask her to ignore it. When an aunt urges her to bend down with caution, we ask her to follow the advice. When a salesman at a bra shop stares at her, we ask her to remember that he is just doing his job.   

I think it is ridiculous that you didn’t know this. Breasts are personal: we don’t flash details about them or the periphery in national dailies.

When she becomes a young adult, we watch her giggle looking at delicate lacelike lingerie. When she gets married (or dates, if we decide to acknowledge: when we learn about it) we watch her buy some stuff. When she becomes a mother, we watch her with pride as she feeds her child. When she dies of breast cancer, we watch her fight it.

I think it is ridiculous that you didn’t know this. Breasts are personal, we laugh at crude breast jokes in films (juicy apples, oranges). We don’t raise an alarm when we spot a rash on the left or the right one (we only wear pink ribbons). At times we even forget that men die because of breast cancer too: we think it is a ‘woman’ thing.   

How else do I explain this to you? You see, not only are our breasts personal but even our bras are. We don’t leave bras unattended in the washroom or on the bed, couch or cupboard: this is to avoid embarrassment or appear ‘suggestive’.

Weren’t you the paper that flashed stories on the Pink Chaddi Campaign? Come on, didn’t you think that why was there not an equally bigger Pink Bra Campaign?

It’s really personal.

It’s a body part that exists and we all know it does.

Look at Facebook and Twitter, people are proving just that:
Deepika Padukone: “I have a nose and nostrils.”
Others: Deepika, you have a spine too.

It’s just that we really can’t talk about it. Unless ofcourse it is the month of October. Wait, did you confuse September with October?

Okay, this is really exhausting and unnecessary. I am not sure if you are really getting the point: So let us for the sake of mankind and womankind pretend that while the men have chests (and breasts) and wear vests I’m roaming the streets sans boobs and ‘vest-less’. I have nothing to ‘hide’.

But just one more thing before I go and put my bra to dry on the clothes line (And yes, the women in my family told me to cover it with a towel: my balcony faces the neighbours): Was there no woman colleague on the desk that day? May be, she would have stopped you, warned you.

I am really feeling sorry for you. So here’s a little tip for your future pieces: Don’t talk about bras. And not even periods. But feel free to talk of bra straps and underpants (panties) I think we’ve been okay with that in the past.

Yours,
Purva Grover


Image: here

Add ‘preparing’ for death to your to-do-list?

Life comes with a deadline and when the time is over death just lifts you with its claws. Life teaches you a lot but it can never teach you the lessons that death can. Many of you may not have the patience to read this long gloomy post, piece of writing, but it is my request that you read. I am going to be comparing death with things like a donut and you may find it lame, hurtful and hate it too. But I am going to do so because I want each one of us, 25 or 65, to prepare for death, not as much as for our sakes but for the sakes of the lives we leave behind. We prepare so much to sit for an entrance exam, to get ready for a party, to speak to our boss for a raise, to propose to our teenage crush…can I request you to take a few minutes out and prepare for death? I don’t want anyone to start living in a state of fear (as I admit, I do) after reading this piece but I do want you to feel a lump in your throat by the end, the lump that will make you brave enough to approach the topic, death, with your family and friends. And if you don’t have the patience to read it all, just read the last bit. I don’t believe in talking of my personal pain on public platforms, I refrain from it all the time but this time around I want to, for two reasons, one, I need to write this to help me feel better and two, I want everyone to ‘prepare’.

It was two years and two months back that one of my best friends lost her dad. Ever since I have changed as a friend, daughter, sister, aunt, lately a wife; I am a different person. A person who lives in a constant state of fear, a person who asks herself the same question each morning, ‘Are we growing that fast that our parents are going away?’ Yes, we’re growing old, and our parents older. But, ‘It is time for them to go away?’ Is there ever a ‘destined’ or ‘right’ time for parents to just go away? Is there a ‘time’ for anyone to go away? I shiver when my phone rings at a time it should not. I cross my fingers when I get a SMS at an odd hour that reads, Call Me. On that day when we visited our friend, another friend had said, ‘There was a time we stood with each other when we stepped on the stage for a school annual day performance now we’re here, we’ve really grown up.’ It was true, is true, we’re growing up. But growing up was not making things easier. It was just bringing us closer to the loss.  After I lost my grandparents a couple of years ago (both within less than a gap of a year, such was their love that my nana decided to join my nani, when she left) I spent years crying in the dark when everyone was sleeping. I had to be brave, I was in my 20s. I had tried to comfort myself in many ways. I told myself that at least nani came back home after staying in the coma for a while and lived and left us from home, not in a hospital. When nana gave up on ‘living’ and we could see him slowly drifting away from us we prayed and tried to comfort him with ‘our’ presence but we couldn’t, how do you comfort a person to live without ‘someone’ he had lived with for more than 60 years? We panic at the sight of having to give away even a phone that we have used for years.  When he left us, I tried to comfort myself saying, ‘At least they are together now.’ Even till date I get moist-eyed every single day but I don’t hide my pain anymore, I just look up and imagine both of them looking at all of us, smiling. I tell them, I love them and I rub off my tears and get on with life. But that’s not one of the hardest lessons ‘death’ has taught me. To ‘go on with life’ is hard but not the hardest. I remember an aunt of a friend who had lost her husband when her kids when 10 and 8 saying these words, ‘You know why God build us the way he did? So that when we lose someone we force ourselves to get busy with lives. If there were no food to cook, no job to earn money from, no kids to live for, no electricity bill to remember to pay, etc. what would we do fill up the hours, what would get us back to life?’ And till date her words ring in my ears, the starkness of the words. The simple truth about death.

As I write this I have lost a dear uncle to a sudden heart attack. One evening he was smiling, same night he was no more. Someone has lost a son, someone a brother, someone a  husband, someone a father. They will bounce back, live, get on with life. We will make sure they do, we will be around, we will be…but he will not. Life will never be the same for all of us. How will they live from this day on, I don’t know. My hands shiver as I write this. We can’t fight death. When I spoke to my aunt  (his wife) she said, ‘We can’t bring him back. We all have lovely memories of him.’ She was giving me courage, holding herself for her children. Her loss is unimaginable and she is already ‘living on’ for the lives around her. Do we have the courage to do that? Or does death give us the courage? I don’t have the answers. So, I am asking myself these questions again and taking certain decisions, will you too please? Let’s prepare ourselves.

·         Stay fit. Just like you take out time for a drink with friends, a movie date with your partner, an extra hour for a presentation… take out time to exercise, to visit a doctor regularly. Get the required check-ups. If you can spend money on a pair of shoes you can spend it on a semi-annual or annual medical check-up? FIT PEOPLE DIE, YOUNG PEOPLE DIE. Don’t think you are a fit because you take the stairs and sleep well, get a check-up. Go to a doctor.

·         Encourage (if required force) your parents to stay fit. They will ignore you at times. Gain weight, refuse to go to a doctor for a cough, headache, chest pain etc. Even if they say they’re feeling better, go visit them. Take them to a doc. Keep a tab on their pills, checking every now and then if they’re taking the required dose.

·         Respect your parents. Once upon a time they were patient with you when you threw tantrums to go to a doctor or drink the sweet syrup. They missed movies, changed jobs, shifted homes, and sacrificed passions for your sake. When it is your turn to do that, DO THAT. They are your KIDS now, who need the love, care, warmth. Just like you were lost on the first day at school or college and they held your hand, today they are lost, when you left the home and went to hostel or started your own family or took a job somewhere else, they felt as lost. HOLD THEIR HANDS.

·         Today it was he/he/them/his/her….tomorrow it will be you/me/us. People go away. Remember there will be a day we will go away. It is not always that ‘others’ lose their dear ones. WE WILL LOSE OUR LOVED ONES TOO. Make arrangements. If you are married, sit down with your partner tell him/her about the insurance covers, bank nominee papers, medical covers…prepare a file with all the details, contact numbers, etc. You don’t want her/him to be dealing with the paperwork in those times. Tell your children the same thing too. Prepare them.

·         Sit down with your parents and ask them to make a WILL. You do that too. Pain, money, greed…such emotions make people act weird, you don’t want to ever fight with your siblings or parent over money. God forbid, you become your greedy or your sibling does, you don’t want to fight. Not all children fight, but some do. Do your parents a favour, do yourself a favour, and make a will. No you are not too fit or young, make a will.

·         Develop a hobby. You don’t want to be dependent on anyone to fill in those empty hours when you have lost your partner and have no one left to share a cup of chai with. We will all die someday, sooner or later, we all feel lonely. We all look up to our busy friends, children…whose lives will not halt as badly as ours would when we lose our partner or parent or friend. So find for yourself a comforting interest that will if nothing distracts your mind when you will really need it.

·         Never sleep over a fight, never leave home angry, never hang up pissed… in short, complete every angry moment with a resolve, smile, solution, hug. You will not be able to live with the regret of being angry with the person you saw, spoke to for the last time.

·         Let the person grieve. Each one of us has our own way of grieving with loss. If a person wants to be left alone for a while, let him/her be, making sure they are fine. If they are angry, let them scream at you.

·         And last, just tell your loved ones you LOVE THEM, each day, each moment, hug them tight and tell them they mean the world to you.

 Image: here