Der Käfig des Körperbildes
© Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan | Anupam Arunachalam
On Thursday, when I woke up, I found a broken cage by my bedside.
The twisted wires of the cage had bent outward, freeing the captive inside – my confidence. As I blinked the sleep from my eyes, the cage and the glowing ball of visualised self-esteem faded away as a new feeling of assurance seeped through me.
Until today, my confidence had been a prisoner to my body image. Now, no more. For the first time in two decades, I didn’t care that I wasn’t slim, svelte, or attractive. It was sufficient that my body worked well enough for me to walk to the bathroom by myself to pee in peace.
You see, I’d given birth to my first child on Wednesday night. The experience, to one as self-conscious as myself, was an absolute nightmare. The first indignity I suffered that night, was at the capable hands of two brisk nurses who shaved my nether regions for the Big Event. “Doctor should be able to see clearly, no?” one coaxed, as another pried apart my tightly clasped thighs. As I lay seething in a pool of shame, unable to see what was happening over my enormously pregnant belly, they worked with clinical precision and zero embarrassment. Then, the doctors poking and prodding me during the actual birth did induce screams. Thankfully, this was ignored as an expected part of childbirth. But the nurse coming in at 2 am to squish my breasts for milk was the final straw.
The cage of body-consciousness that imprisoned my confidence blew open. My body spent nine months growing a baby. Then it was manhandled by more people in just one night of childbirth than in a quarter-century of life.
And yet here it was, still working remarkably well. It deserved respect, especially from me. My body is awesome.
The twisted wires of the cage had bent outward, freeing the captive inside – my confidence. As I blinked the sleep from my eyes, the cage and the glowing ball of visualised self-esteem faded away as a new feeling of assurance seeped through me.
Until today, my confidence had been a prisoner to my body image. Now, no more. For the first time in two decades, I didn’t care that I wasn’t slim, svelte, or attractive. It was sufficient that my body worked well enough for me to walk to the bathroom by myself to pee in peace.
You see, I’d given birth to my first child on Wednesday night. The experience, to one as self-conscious as myself, was an absolute nightmare. The first indignity I suffered that night, was at the capable hands of two brisk nurses who shaved my nether regions for the Big Event. “Doctor should be able to see clearly, no?” one coaxed, as another pried apart my tightly clasped thighs. As I lay seething in a pool of shame, unable to see what was happening over my enormously pregnant belly, they worked with clinical precision and zero embarrassment. Then, the doctors poking and prodding me during the actual birth did induce screams. Thankfully, this was ignored as an expected part of childbirth. But the nurse coming in at 2 am to squish my breasts for milk was the final straw.
The cage of body-consciousness that imprisoned my confidence blew open. My body spent nine months growing a baby. Then it was manhandled by more people in just one night of childbirth than in a quarter-century of life.
And yet here it was, still working remarkably well. It deserved respect, especially from me. My body is awesome.
ÜBER DIE FREIHEITSGESCHICHTEN
In einem Open Call wurde das Publikum eingeladen, ihre Kurzgeschichten zum Thema einzuschicken: „On Thursday, when I woke up, I found a broken cage by my bedside… (Am Donnerstag, als ich aufwachte, fand ich einen zerbrochenen Käfig neben meinem Bett...)“. Die Jury, bestehend aus der renommierten Autorin und Historikerin Narayani Basu und der Geschichtenerzählerin und Autorin Nidhie Sharma, wählte drei Geschichten aus.Lesen Sie die beiden anderen Geschichten hier:
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