Bhadrakali, the Fiery Indian Goddess

Fifteen years after Pati left us for another world, a surgeon held a scalpel one cold February morning and scraped out every ounce of the breast tissue from my chest. Unlike Pati, the two ends of my brown skin form a crooked line over an implant. Unlike Pati, I was only 40 years old with a ten-year-old and wondered if I would live the day to become a grandmother. 

Growing up, Pati was about summers, good food, mango pickle, and stories. Whenever someone said I resembled her, I was thrilled. I wanted to grow up like her, become her, be her. As the years pulled and fat gathered around her arms, thighs, middle region, and everywhere possible, I was no longer sure. But as I learned later, I was partially her because apart from her looks, I had successfully inherited a specific DNA.

“Anyone in your family?” the Doctor quizzed me the day he delivered the horrible news.  

Pati’s clenched jaw threw up in my mind before zooming out. She sat in her chair, one arm resting on her knee while she rubbed the fingertips, making a grating sound. 

She heaved upon seeing me as the bones crackled under her weight. I held my hand out, but Pati shoved it away and dragged her feet towards the bathroom, leaving a trail of dry skin cells and body odor resulting from being in one place for the whole day.

Pati had long given up taking a bath on her own. Drawing water from a plastic bucket and pouring it on herself was a task her age and frame couldn’t undertake. Instead, she left the business to us, and I wanted nothing more than to douse her in dettol and soap. 

Her hand fumbled over the metal knob of the tap before yanking at the traditional 9 yards saree while her tough, hardened nails scraped her body, resulting in a further shower of white skin flakes.

The elaborately pleated fabric came off her wide hips, and she plunged into the white chair I had laid in the bathroom. 

“How is the water?” I asked, handing her the orange plastic mug.

She dipped her fingers into the tepid water and gave a yes nod.

Washing her gave me a sense of accomplishment in embarking on a holy ritual. Pools gathered around her feet, refusing to soak her dry skin. Pati was quiet when I scrubbed her with bubbles of lather. I thrived on removing the grime of sweat from the folds of her fattened layers, except when my hands felt the flat of her chest. The softness gave way to tautness under my palm, and Pati never lost an opportunity to point at the thin line where the two flaps met. 

“They cut and threw it away.” Her finger traced the well-sewn edge with a sigh.

My grip around the bar of soap loosened. 

I had never wanted to ask, know or learn how she felt. All that mattered was to finish cleaning her up because looking at the non-existent breast had been the most challenging part of the bathing ritual.

When I first saw my scar in the bathroom mirror, Pati’s voice sneaked up from my memory. “They removed it,” she hissed, and I recalled more than her voice — her quivering fingers, twitched lips, dull eyes. 

Had Pati been in pain? But she was the great matriarch, the strongest and the bravest I knew. My forefinger followed the line that curved to my left armpit. Had Pati felt the touch? Would she have laughed if I had tickled her? Did she miss the flesh, the curves, the nipple? A lump throbbed in my throat. There was nothing to rub, caress, or experience the joy of human touch.  

When I stood under the shower and let the rivulets stream over my bosom, Pati’s grainy image sharpened – the wrinkles on her forehead thickened, and the hollow of her cheeks deepened. Was Pati unable to bathe, or did she not want to bear the knowledge of a leveled surface? 

Anger gushed in my veins.  

I hope there are no more surprises.  

I remembered the bags of fat that sagged from the folds of her thighs, arms, and back. 

“It’s the medication,” doctors and nurses assured me when the scales tipped the first time.

With more significant concerns, like if I would see the light of tomorrow hanging like a dark cloud, weight shouldn’t have mattered.

“You look nice. A lovely hairstyle, too,” a distant relative pointed at my wig. “You were too thin earlier,” he shrunk his nose to express disapproval. Was it disgust? 

“Only now, your weight is the right one.” 

Was it sympathy? Empathy?

There were no words, but his remark found a spot in my heart and bore a deep hole. I had only just survived an accident, lost a body part, and was coming to terms with a new lease of life. Body image should not have concerned me, but it harvested itself in those dark moments. Pati emerged from those shadows and gasped while she lost her footing and fell hard. Oh. I remember that day. She had finished lunch and had limped towards the sink to wash when she slipped. Although her hand grabbed the faucet, she was halfway down. We ran to hold, to lift, to prevent harm. But she outweighed us despite three people by her side. A little kid from the neighborhood had giggled at the sight, and Pati’s heart had broken. 

And as the display dial on the machine made up its mind under my feet, Pati’s doleful eyes scared me. I counted grams, milligrams, but I became a skeptic in the night’s din—no use of anything if I was not sure of living. Some nights, I was even a Philosopher. Who am I? What was my purpose? Is everyone not approaching death with each passing moment? 

“Hey, Bhadrakali!” Pati called out in my dreams. 

I moved, fidgeted, and felt (and not felt) the soft foreign object inside.

“The boobs have done their job, and your kid is grown. It shouldn’t matter,” one friend remarked, dismissing my fears and pointing at the purpose of their existence. She was right. The humps were only for beautification and completeness, which I lacked.

But the gorge in my heart deepened when photographs of friends, relatives, and cousins flaunting their well-maintained curves flooded my phone screen. Nobody shied away from the bulge on the chest. It sneered and snorted, grabbing my eyeballs. Even the saree fabric undulated like a river– satiny, glassy and the women on the TV screen paraded the deep valleys with oomphs, making it worse. 

“They,” Pati’s raspy voice lingered, “cut it off!”

Till Pati turned the grand 90, she had insisted on the long saree of 9 yards. It had been her safety net – away from prying eyes, blending into the mainstream. She huffed and puffed through the drill, which I now understand why. 

I remember telling her more than once that she could wear a gown more easily. 

“Chi,” Pati would dismiss it like swatting a fly.

The fabric covered her one sagging breast and ground zero like a tea towel making her inconspicuous in a room full of people. No visitor or family member was witness to the horror that lay under those layers. Pati liked it that way, and she lived like any of us till her organs stopped working due to age and fatigue. 

I couldn’t parade in a saree. So, I took refuge in oversized t-shirts and scarves. The floral blouse I bought on a sale lay abandoned on the bottom of the drawer. Ignoring it was impossible, but I lacked the courage to slip it over my head. Sometimes I draped another shawl over, imitating Pati. 

Clothes did very little to uplift my defeated soul. Pati scorned, dawdled, and pointed to her mended skin in my dreams, in the bathroom, when I cooked or cleaned over and over till my ears ached. 

Perhaps I should have spoken to her.

Perhaps I should have looked into her eyes.

Perhaps I should have listened. 

And she appeared ghost-like and threatened in a tone that sent a chill down my spine. “They…” she began, and I screamed, shutting my ears.

I pulled the floral blouse with a collar out of the drawer. My hands shook as they found the shoulder hole. The long-held tears flooded my cheeks when the top fell over me. A small dent was visible. I have agonized over this minor deformity that stares back, threatening to spoil perfection. But that day, I embraced the defect, wore the blouse, showed off the dent, and even flaunted it because I had suffocated enough wearing oversized clothes for months.

It has been a few years since then, and fellow warriors have shared many hacks for the perfect “look.” Old socks, soft tissues, and some tapes do the trick. There are no solutions for lingerie shopping. There is an unspoken code to buy the size that fits one cup. No one asks, and no one speaks. We live catering to the one that exists while we mourn the lost one. However, no shortcuts or remedies exist to regain the joy of touch. I endure the absence with a coldness I am scared to uncover.  

Sometimes I worry about gaining Pati’s flabbiness and fattiness till her voice echoes from behind. She is in the elegant pink Devendra saree with a yellow border, giving me her best toothless grin and calling me “Bhadrakali.”

“She had a reason to call me that,” I tell myself because Bhadrakali is the fiery Hindu Goddess.

And I hear her say, “They…,” and in that fleeting moment, I know she is drawing my attention to that phase of her life, how she embraced it, how she endured it, and how she experienced it.

Pati was distressed. Oh yes. She was. She mourned the loss of her body till the end of her days. She knew that a part of her had crossed over before her time, and the memories it triggered were strong. She grunted as dry, dead cells gathered in the pleats of her saree and sighed while her eyes skittered to see those of us who absently led lives oblivious to her loss or the dull ache. 

The number on the weighing scale has shot up, and my vision has taken a beating. Pati’s whispers show no respite. Sometimes, I mask the dents; other times, I let it be. I am yet to find a solution for asymmetry, but I know “They cut it off for a reason,” and I hear Pati, “Hey Bhadrakali.”