'Well Heeled' no more

I am a centimeter short of 5 feet. There, I said it! From the time I painfully realised I had reached my full quota of growth,  I tried to tell anyone who would listen that I was 5’1’’. No one is walking around with a measuring tape, are they? I don’t know how many believed it. After a few years, I scaled it down to 5 feet, realizing 5’1’’ was a bit of a, well, stretch and even a good lie needed to be believable in the first instance. A centimeter was forgivable, I told myself and fixed my own height at 5 feet. And now, at the lofty age of 41, I am declaring to myself and the world that it makes no difference to your life or mine how tall I really am and what I really am is a centimeter short of 5 feet. Hark – did you just hear a thunder clap? The sound of a mountain crumbling? A scary gale? No? Exactly!

Did you ever know that a short person, in the first instance, is unaware of the fact that they are really short? I was about 17 when my friends were having a random discussion and one of them remarked, ‘you know what I realized standing in the bus this morning? Mostly everyone was shorter than me! You guys ever felt that?’. It was the sort of random thing you nod along to (in my life experience upto that point) without much discussion and along with the others I lazily murmered a ‘ya’ when there was a sudden peal of laughter in the group and I looked around wondering what I had missed. Then I realized they were laughing at me. ‘You agree?’, one of my friends was asking while practically wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘Well, yes..?’ I replied, still not realizing what exactly was funny. From the ensuing rounds of fresh laughter and overlapping exclamations from my friends I suddenly hit realization – I was actually shorter than most people. A fact of life that had somehow escaped my attention till that point because it had not stood in the way of my doing anything I had wanted to do – topping examinations, taking dance lessons, winning debate competitions etc. That was the day I took a long, hard look at myself and had this epiphany – you are bloody short! You better shoot up fast or you are going to owe the world a major apology!

Unfortunately life intervened and I really could not work on the task of growing taller. There were still degrees to be won, grades to be achieved, a career to be established. And thus I missed the deadline. Besides I was probably at the end of the growth cycle in any case by that point. Of course I had plenty of reminders along the way – various people from various walks of life reminding me that I had failed the test of growing tall. Till I was about 25, my dear grandmother refused to let go of the hope that I was going to gain another couple of inches, vertically. ‘I think you have grown a bit taller from the last time I saw you,’ she would say, but I knew that was just her love for me. To all intents and purposes, I was done. Done for. And woefully short!

You wouldn’t believe how this offended people! I got so many short jokes from tall people during University and later my office days that I finally put up my hands and gave up! I joined the league of fat people who made themselves the butt of jokes before anyone else could, because seriously, that was the least you could do for the world after failing miserably at that simplest task of achieving an acceptable physical stature! There I would be, presenting ideas at a serious meeting when someone would feel the need to point out how small I looked. I mean, how distracting, right? How was anyone supposed to acknowledge your ideas made sense when you made it impossible, visually, to get past the fact that you were really really short?

And then I married a guy who was 6’1” - a full foot and an inch and a centimeter taller than me!  That provided some cause for merriment – the wife-needing-a-foot-stool to get hold of the husband’s collar variety of jokes flowed. My six inch heels on my wedding day did nothing for the wedding pics which still continue to entertain and engage! And imagine when I was carrying my first child – bring on the football-on-heels jokes – puh-leese!

And then there was this one time when a colleague thought it would be fun to have my height measured in view of the entire office one lazy Saturday. (Everyone else got measured too, it was all in good-natured jest). Add to the hilarious little frame the postpartum weight I was still carrying from my second pregnancy and there was cause for much giggling, squealing and hysterical laughter. There was this tiny flicker of resentment that sparked  inside of me that day because this was initiated by people I would need to trust to judge me by what I did rather than how tall I was or how much I weighed. Also the gnawing thought that all it took was a smidgen of sensitivity and respect for a fellow human being to leave well alone! It was difficult enough having to go the extra mile your entire life because your genetic makeup did not include a ‘tall’ gene. On top of that is the compulsion to find defense mechanisms to deal with states of being that are hereditary, acquired, grown into or simply, just there by virtue of nature or nurture. You grudgingly get used to being judged on those attributes instead of the ones you have worked for, not what you have spent years trying to master and perfect but the physical or personality traits that go into making you, you – height, weight, complexion, texture of skin or hair, oddities in speech or gait, even accents, clothes or food preferences! In other words you live your life allowing the bullies of the world to wield the power to undermine you.

If you have ever made fun of a close friend for being fat, taunted a cousin about her skin tone, sniggered at a colleague who lisps, I am sorry my friend, but you are a bully. And here I would like to reiterate that bullying is not just about physically hurting those weaker than you. It is about aiming your negativity - whether physical or verbal - at someone you perceive as lacking in something you happen to have. At the individual level we shamelessly take credit for something that we have played no part in achieving – genes, gender. And use that to shame others we perceive as different – or in our estimation, falling short. Because it makes us feel superior? Because it helps us forgive our own limitations to point out that someone lacks something we so easily, naturally, lazily possess? At the societal level we do the same with caste, religion, language, place of origin. Use it as a tool to differentiate and taunt those who are different from us – for no fault of theirs. For no merit of ours. 

I am taking off those heels now. Because I no longer consider it necessary to offer a defense or an explanation for the fact that I am short. Or fat. And a woman. A Malayali. An Indian. Any other label which happens to be mine by reason of birth or descent. I think I will just focus my energies on battles worth fighting from now on. 

Sunday at the Mall

Whoever said weekends are for rest and relaxation?? Any average householder would know it is all about tending to chores and laundry that have piled up over the week! Now in case you are among those sorted people who manage to keep their weekends free at least once in a while to actually get in some R&R, where would you go in our beloved Kochi? Last weekend I had one of those rare occasions when, not because of any fore planning but because of intervening public holidays, I actually got to think about what to do with a Sunday. After much deliberation, my husband and I decided to be adventurous and took the unorthodox decision to watch a movie at PVR. I call that decision unorthodox because we usually shun crowded roads and cinema-halls-on-the-weekend like the plague. And yet the prospect of a free Sunday (and the fact that we had not seen the face of Kochi on a Sunday in years) fueled our ambition. Booking tickets was a breeze since we avoided the new releases and opted for a critically acclaimed release from the past month. Best seats in the house at a convenient noon time showing (when we calculated at least some of the crowds would not have ventured out just yet) with just a couple of clicks. And I did not even pay money for them since I had only recently discovered the joys of card points piled up over years of ignorance! I had the additional brainwave of avoiding personal transportation and opting for a Uber cab since parking was one of the biggest killjoys on a busy day at the mall. We were quite at peace with the world when we set out in our Uber for the mall which in our worst experience was about 45 minutes away. We had still allocated an entire hour for the drive considering the rains and because, there is nothing like being too early to the mall!

We had out first suspicion that things were going wrong when the new-to-town cabbie (probably following the GPS direction) took the Kaloor route from Kadavanthra instead of the common sensical choice which would be the Vyttila route - at least it offers some method to the madness. But no, by the time we looked up from our phone screens for long enough to realize where we were, we were caught up in the quagmire of potholes, metro work and snail's pace traffic that is the the Kaloor- Edappally  stretch. Well, we still had time to spare and I tried to keep the hubby distracted with random  anecdotes of the kids and pictures of my cousin's baby that had just arrived hot off the press on Whatsapp (as a character says in the movie Maheshinte Prathikaram, "this happens to have been my idea - if it had been your's, I would have killed you!") But pretty soon I had run out of conversation and we could not escape the fact that we had been at a standstill for about ten minutes at Mamangalam Junction. Twenty minutes to the movie...."we are not going to make it," hubby declared. "Come on! Even you have to admit that is a bit of an exaggeration," I said. "I mean, I can practically see the mall!" But ten minutes turned to twenty and we had still not got past the unforgiving signal at Edappally junction! "PVR shows lots of trailers and ads. At least ten more minutes till start of show," I said desperately. If it had not been raining cats and dogs by then I would have suggested we make a run for it. But no, another five minutes to get past the signal and then a seemingly unending and non-moving line to enter the mall. Finally when we were in sight of the gate I told my husband it would be an act of human kindness to the cab driver to spare him the  trauma of driving us in to the mall and spend another hour trying to get out again. My husband  agreed and we ran the last few metres to the mall in the rain, leaving a visibly relieved cabbie behind.  Twenty minutes into show time and thankfully we had missed only a couple of minutes of the movie itself. Since we had not reached ahead of time, we did not get to stop at an ATM as had been the plan and as a result, spent three hours in the theater with about forty rupees between the two of us. As we were not sure we would get even a bottle of water for that amount we swallowed any feelings of hunger or thirst - and that for a noon show! The good thing about that was that we thoroughly empathised with all of the characters' angst and also thoroughly enjoyed our late lunch afterwards. Soon enough, it was time to head home. Enter Operation Weekend Phase Two.

First off, network coverage was so bad that it took ages for us to get a connection on Uber, which meant we had to fit in another coffee into our plans just so we could access the wifi in the coffee shop to book our ride home. The three cabbies who connected called back to say they were all stuck in traffic and it would take them at least an hour or so to get to us at the mall even though the maps showed them in nearby locations. They advised us to cancel the request so we would not lose money, which we did. We were  completely frustrated by this time and decided to take one of the over priced mall taxis home. This also had a wait time of fifteen minutes, we were told. Just then our last connection on Uber called back to inform us that because of a server issue our cancel request had not gone through, so technically he was still connected to us and since he could not reach anywhere without getting through the traffic block he was currently caught in, in any case, he would be fine with attempting to reach us if we did not mind the wait. It was not like we were swamped with options, so we sipped leisurely on the coffee that had been thrust on us by circumstances and lounged for a while. Just when we were seriously beginning to consider the possibility of walking home, the cabbie called to say he had reached the vicinity of the mall. If we could get to the gate, we could all save ourselves the time it would take to enter and exit the mall premises. We left the rest of our pricey coffees and practically ran to the gate, heroically accosting and more or less leaping into the cab just as he was about to take the turning into the mall. Finally, blissfully, we were on our way home from what is surely going to be our reminder in coming years to avoid going out on a Sunday in Kochi!

I guess the blueprint for our day was pretty much drawn the minute we took the decision to watch a movie at the mall on a Sunday. Network and connectivity, as I understand, is a national phenomenon so I will not get into that here. But to get back to my original question - where do we go on a weekend in Kochi and HOW? We live in a city that has a population density of about 6600 per square kilometer. Our public infrastructure is nowhere near catering to the needs of such a huge populace. Our public spaces are often a crying shame - wrecked seating and lighting, rotting piles of garbage, play equipment that holds the very real prospect of a tetanus shot for your child and myriad other challenges ranging from anti social elements to mosquitoes and strays. All of us don't always want to go to the mall on a weekend - I would just as soon take my children for a walk in the park or a few relaxing hours at the beach. Very often we choose the mall simply because it offers structured parking and clean environs - even if we need to wait for hours to get in on a busy day! What the malls have managed to offer its customers needs to be replicated on a larger level for the general public - it is long overdue!  Sure, we have the Metro coming up. Sure, we are in the list of Smart Cities earmarked by the Central Government for massive infrastructure development and creation of quality public spaces. We can only hope that these are going to bring about a tangible difference to how we spend our precious time off! We would gladly, gladly, not add to the crowds thronging the mall on a Sunday if only we had another place to go and a convenient means to get there!