08/04/2020
“I was in the 5th grade when a guy in my class began bullying me for being fat. He would call me names and pass rude comments. I tried to ignore it, hoping it would pass, but it didn’t. It continued for 6 years – eventually it got so bad that I couldn’t eat in front of anybody at school. I would say I’m not hungry even when I was dying of hunger...just to escape his comments.
I tried everything to make him stop – I retaliated, told the teachers, even tried to reason with him, but to no avail. One day, he decided to imitate me in an exaggerated manner – it was so humiliating. He didn’t stop until I broke down in front of my teacher, and then he bullied me into accepting his apology!
Eventually, it got ingrained in me that this is what a fat person’s life is supposed to be like. So one day when the bully started teasing me, and a guy in my class stood up for me, I shouted at him for taking my side!
I started hating myself – I felt like nothing I did was enough. When the group of girls I used to hang out with abandoned me, it made the feeling of self loathing even worse. I had no friends, no life – I just wanted to finish school and not look back.
Nothing changed even in college. As I grew older, my pattern of self hatred and disregard continued – I never thought positively about myself, until the day I stumbled upon RuPaul’s drag race – a show where drag queens compete with each other. In an episode, a drag queen made a simple statement – ‘I’m a man in a wig’ – and it changed my life.
If she could love herself, why couldn’t I? I began analysing my feelings and realised that the only thing that needed to change was my own perspective. Overnight my hatred dissolved and I saw myself in a new light – I felt beautiful.
I took up a job at a magazine and started making Vines for fun. Surprisingly, people liked my Vines, and one of them was Tanmay Bhat. He asked me to join AIB, and that opened the world of comedy for me. But it wasn’t until my first performance at an AIB show, that I realised I could be a stand up comic. I was incredibly nervous, but I had people rolling in their seats with laughter.
It’s been three years and one hell of a journey. The best day though, was when I got to endorse a beauty product. It was the first time a fat person was the face of a cosmetic product, instead of being a side character who was just a source of entertainment. I cried that day for everyone who was told they were ugly. That day, I proved to the world, and to the bully that I was worth it all and that I was more than enough…”
