Where is my collar-bone?

‘Don’t hold your breath for too long. Breathe normally’ says my brother, at my futile efforts to make my collar bone show. He knows me and can see through me.

Sometimes it is good to look back and sometimes it is terrible. I was looking through some old photographs when a skinny, terribly thin girl with a layer of skin wrapped over her skeleton looked back at me from the photographs. I have been seeing these photographs from the time they were taken and so happen to know that this is my photograph !

When and where exactly did those bones go, I often wonder !! There was a time when I was in college, when I used to hate the fact that my collar-bones were protruding making my thinness even more pronounced. And now I am wondering where in God’s name, it has vanished.

Signs of prosperity are showing up in both my bank-balance and my waist size! Every year I seem to grow a little more, horizontally. It is really unfair - when you want to grow tall, it never happens, but you don’t want to grow broad, and no matter what you do, you end up growing uncontrollably. It is also unfair that when everyone else who travels returns thinner than before, I always seem to add more to my bulk !

People prescribed a lot of things to me - Diets, Water therapy, Working out, none of which seemed to work. I tried turning Vegan for some time and gave up milk products. What I had instead was Soymilk and mock-dairy stuff, which, sadly for me, seemed to worsen my situation. On the other hand, when my friend and I shared an apartment on a short-term visit to the US, we binged on potato chips and all sorts of fried stuff, and both of us returned thinner than before. That of course, did not mean that I could have fried stuff back home !

I tried working out, taekwon do (korean karate), tai chi, yoga. You name it and I tried it out. Made me turn more like a Sumo wrestler than like Angelina Jolie - Bulk and muscles rather than just muscle.

For some time, I blamed the steroids that I took for some respiratory conditions as reasons for putting on weight, although, I secretly acknowledged that when I was actually taking the medicines, I was still thin.

Then I blamed my work -software professionals have to work long hours and have irregular food habits and sleeping habits etc. But this is not true either. I have never worked hard enough or ever sacrificed my meals for work.

Then I got a new excuse. I blamed it on going onsite. I later found a photograph, taken after my first onsite visit and found that, that was a lie too!

I always had a date in mind when I would join the gym and turn from Tuntun (popular Hindi Actress) to maybe Simran (before her marriage !!). I always had great excuses to postpone the great day to a later date.

Now I am in what you can term as denial. I am upset and depressed with life (or so I tell my people !) because I have to travel and I refuse to take up any exercise, since I am anyway going away.

I have now learnt a great way to escape comments on my being overweight. I initiate the topic and looking very sad, insist on how awful I look. This obviously invites a lot of sympathetic comments from the listeners who go on to say how I look slightly plump, but am definitely not fat. This trick, I have noticed, works everytime, especially with relatives ! My relatives are experts in making you feel good, if you are in a pitiable condition and making you feel terrible, if you are in an enviable position!

Meanwhile, as a temporary measure, I have learnt to suck in my breath everytime I walk past someone! Once in a while, I try to find my collarbone, by holding in my breath and straining myself in front of the mirror, but the stress is too much !