2
" I once asked her if she was happy. “That depends on what I am able to get done today,” she said, laughing. She told me that the completion of her daily tasks was the only thing she felt she had control over. They were a form of meditation, of salve. Kept busy, she had no time to ruminate and no time for opinions, certainly not feminist ones. I pressed her: “I mean, are you happy with your life, Rajima?” “I don’t know,” she said uncomfortably, as if she’d never really considered such a question. “When there is little you can do, you do what you can.” Happiness for my grandmother seemed to be a verb rather than a noun. She had so little control over her own life. Yet she took control, out of thin air for herself, when she could. "
― , Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir
3
" The insidious reasons for a brown girl’s self-loathing won’t be surprising to any woman of color. I cannot rightly compare my own struggles to those of another minority, as each ethnicity comes with its own baggage and the South Asian experience is just one variation on the experience of dark-skinned people everywhere. As parents and grandparents often do in Asian countries, my extended family urged me to avoid the sun, not out of fear that heatstroke would sicken me or that UV rays would lead to cancer, but more, I think, out of fear that my skin would darken to the shade of an Untouchable, a person from the lowest caste in Indian society, someone who toils in the fields. The judgments implicit in these exhortations—and what they mean about your worth—might not dawn on you while you’re playing cricket in the sand. What’s at stake might not dawn on you while, as a girl, you clutch fast to yourself your blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll named Helen. But all along, the message that lighter skin is equivalent to a more attractive, worthier self is getting beamed deep into your subconscious. Western ideals of beauty do not stop at ocean shores. They pervade the world and mingle with those of your own country to create mutant, unachievable standards. "
― , Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir
14
" In the car inching its way down Fifth Avenue, toward Bergdorf Goodman and this glamorous party, I looked back on my past with a new understanding. This sickness, the “endo-whatever,” had stained so much—my sense of self, my womanhood, my marriage, my ability to be present. I had effectively missed one week of each month every year of my life since I was thirteen, because of the chronic pain and hormonal fluctuations I suffered during my period. I had lain in bed, with heating pads and hot-water bottles, using acupuncture, drinking teas, taking various pain medications and suffering the collateral effects of them. I thought of all the many tests I missed in various classes throughout my education, the school dances, the jobs I knew I couldn’t take as a model, because of the bleeding and bloating as well as the pain (especially the bathing suit and lingerie shoots, which paid the most). How many family occasions was I absent from? How many second or third dates did I not go on? How many times had I not been able to be there for others or for myself? How many of my reactions to stress or emotional strife had been colored through the lens of chronic pain? My sense of self was defined by this handicap. The impediment of expected pain would shackle my days and any plans I made.
I did not see my own womanhood as something positive or to be celebrated, but as a curse that I had to constantly make room for and muddle through. Like the scar on my arm, my reproductive system was a liability. The disease, developing part and parcel with my womanhood starting at puberty with my menses, affected my own self-esteem and the way I felt about my body. No one likes to get her period, but when your femininity carries with it such pain and consistent physical and emotional strife, it’s hard not to feel that your body is betraying you. The very relationship you have with yourself and your person is tainted by these ever-present problems. I now finally knew my struggles were due to this condition. I wasn’t high-strung or fickle and I wasn’t overreacting. "
― , Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir
16
" But now I was home. In my home, home home, once and for all. I had had various apartments before in quite a few cities over the course of my life, but this was the first one I owned, and it felt good. A roof over my head and a place to be private, to cry, to laugh, to gorge, to hope, to dream, to wallow, and to pray for things was a salve to my soul. "
― , Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir