Rehana Aslam July 4, 2000

Tags: Family , Fashion

rel="tag" href="/tag/law">law thinks I look matronly. A family friend thinks that I look 20 years older than I really am.

My editor once suggested gently that one of the newspaper's photographers do a retake. Many of my friends have even volunteered to pay for another photo to be taken at a reputable studio.

The photo evokes strong emotions in my parents. My mother becomes emotional on seeing the photo every week and is insistent that I change it. (I really think her major objection to it is that it is of no assistance in altering my single status.)

My father, who once declared, to my horror, that the world is filled with only two kinds of people, the beautiful and the ugly, thinks that I should change the photo because it makes me appear to belong to the second category.

In spite of all their concerns I really have no interest in changing it.

Last Friday I was among the millions worldwide who tuned in to the exhibition of female beauty on the Miss Universe Show in which India produced the eventual winner, Lara Dutta.

I looked on as Miss India, first in her two-piece swimsuit, and later, in her red figure-hugging gown, with her beautiful face and swept up hair, holding the Miss Universe crown on her head tenuously, walked gracefully on the stage amidst the flashing bulbs of eager photographers.

But as she walked in her moment of victory, images of another girl replaced her. Another attractive girl, who died from a malignant brain tumor four years ago, after ailing for two years. The girl was my sister, Huma.

Huma, who had an attractive face even though she maligned her pronounced nose very frequently, who had inherited my mother's thick, wavy hair. The girl with a great figure since the age of 13, whose naturally well shaped calves were a source of not unhealthy envy among friends who spent months in the gym in attempting to attain the same. The girl who would look equally good in a fitting dress, a pair of loose jeans and a T-shirt, a shalwar kameez, who looked beautiful and graceful on the stage when she modeled in Pakistani clothes at the social events. (The girl who ironically was to regain the attractiveness in death.)

Huma, whose slim, attractive face had become fat, unrecognizable, distorted from the daily steroid doses which the doctors had prescribed to control the tumor after her case was diagnosed as inoperable, whose face had become hairy from the steroids pumped into her.

Huma, whose lovely, long, wavy hair had fallen off in clumps, the result of the maximum radiotherapy done, whose hair would remain cropped and unattractive because it was more manageable during her illness, and it would remain so until her death.

Huma, whose once attractive slimness had converted into fat: she had become 40 pounds heavier as a result of the steroids. Her breasts, once the French ideal, had become large, bulbous, and unattractive. Her once attractive calves had become flaccid as a result of little physical activity that was possible with her illness. Her grace on a stage became a cherished memory as the paralysis made even the simple and functional act of walking impossible for six months until her death. Her once fashionable clothes had to be given away to make way for clothes that suited her increased size.

Huma, whose dramatically altered appearance prompted a great deal of thought on the theme of mortality. She was to inspire an intellectual and pragmatic interest in the concept of Maya, the ephemeral nature of physical object, a philosophy from the country that has produced the latest Miss Universe, the stunning, and graceful Lara Dutta, the young lady who held on to the Miss Universe crown tenuously as she walked on the stage amidst the flashbulbs of the enthusiastic photographers.

Members of my family, friends and acquaintances have noticed my altered appearance. I am very much aware of it. The exhibitionism which had been dictated by enthusiasm and a fashion sense, not by vanity, have given way to a new modesty. The woman who once lived in jeans and short T-shirts and tight-fitting dresses is no more. She has been replaced by the woman in longer, looser dresses, the more modest clothes, the shalwars, the saris, the lenghas.

To see the degeneration of what was once attractive flesh pushes one to an awareness of the limitations of the physical, of the transience of life. It is a realization that kills vanity, that engenders modesty and humility.

And so the photo which accompanies my columns will remain unchanged.