I couldn’t envisage me being the only girl in the class to wear a dupatta. I chose not to become different from my other classmates.

So she said, “Ask your parents to buy a dupatta for you okay?” I cringed, I collapsed into myself, but I decided not to tell my parents. However, my teachers couldn’t handle the image of my chest. I had one more year to enjoy that freedom. According to the rules, girls should wear shawls only from Class 8. I was in Class 7 when my teacher took me to the staff room and whispered in my ears that I must start wearing a dupatta (shawl) over my school uniform to cover my large bosom. Oh! And the elevators beeped, all heads turned toward me. In their minds, fat girls can lift heavy objects and hurl them effortlessly. My school teachers wanted me to try hard and win medals at shot put. A cousin asked if my friends are scared of me in school because I am gigantic. Someone whom I dearly love told her friend that I wasn’t going out often because I was fat. Roxane Gay has given a fitting phrase to articulate my feelings - my body felt like a cage. The biggest in my classroom, in my workplace, in my family, and even in elevators. My BMI has always been marginally alarming I have been obese all my life. She was born a couple of hours ago.” My mother always relates this conversation with pride because she pushed out that HUGE baby. Her jaw dropped she asked my grandmother, “Whose child is this? So huge! Already looks like it’s 10-months-old!” The remark terrorised my grandmother. I was a few hours old when my aunt saw a nurse carrying me to another room. But Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body has exhumed some painful memories and writing about those here will be a comforting exercise in catharsis. Is it fair to air stories about my battle when Gay’s memoir is utterly raw and intimate? I don’t know.

Hunger by roxane gay review