Fat. So? Update!
Ameya and Pallavi return from a long silence with an update and a plan to write more newsletters
Hello,
Pallavi here, and it’s been a while. Ameya and I agreed to attempt to get this newsletter started once more! (Fingers crossed, hehe.)
We’ve had a lot of new subscribers, so hello and thank you :)
Ameya and I used to host a podcast about being fat women in India (you can still listen to it here), but we got very busy and had to stop.
What we hope to do with this newsletter is just write more often, at least once a month, and talk to you about the ways we continue to navigate the world as fatties and the things it makes us think about.
Ameya is an editor and translator and lives in Bangalore with her three cats. She’s joyfully single and has very decided opinions on many things. She’ll have things to say further down.
About me before you hear from Ameya… I keep changing hats, and I’m wearing that of an intuitive coach for now. I work with individuals and groups who want to understand the energetics of what’s going on (auras, unseen, unknown stuff that I can tap into). We then disentangle the energy, creating more ease and faster results for them.
Since 2022, our last update, I have moved to Goa. It was a fantastic decision, from the perspective that I love the clean air and proximity to the water and that I am still surprised when I turn a corner and a view takes my breath away. Here is a picture from a recent staycation.
The other amazing thing from a Fat. So? perspective is how little I think about being fat-shamed for the clothes I wear. From my tank tops to backless outfits to shorts and knee-length dresses, I have worn them all without worrying about who’s looking. And I have only ever received compliments or nothing at all. Nothing that makes me wish I was “covered”.
TW: mental health
It’s not been easy making this shift, I will admit that. I came to Goa on a high—financially and personally—and within days of moving here, it was as if the earth had opened up and swallowed everything I felt confident about at the time.
Quick run-through for context: friends didn’t show up to help with the move (to be fair, the fault was in my expectations); my partner dumped me (again, this happens all the time); and the organization I was with decided to change direction and downsize my role (reasonably so, for them). And it all happened over a weekend (uff…)
The way I saw it then, I had secured all of this before the move, so how did it all unravel so fast?
While everything that happened was perfectly reasonable—the fact that it all happened so quickly was sucky. I have always been able to rely on my spiritual muscle, and surprisingly, that too collapsed, leading to spending the darkest few months I have ever known.
What was surprising was that my inner voice, the intuitive ability that had opened up for me in 2009, became very loud. For a change, I followed what it had to say. Perhaps because there was nothing else I felt I could do, perhaps because I didn’t have the energy to resist. I am not sure why I listened this time, and I am grateful I did. It took a year and some, but I finally clawed my way out of the abyss.
Happier times…
What this has done, though, is made me focus on building my work (ahem, business…) around this intuitive ability and channel my corporate experience to figure this out. When I miss the security of the monthly paycheck, I remember the trade-off that I wake up most mornings excited about what life has to bring.
And that is the quickest update on my life in the last two years. I have many more stories—around doctors and clothes and spaces I can fit in which are more Fat. So? related. But I think I shall end this update here and will save other stories for other issues.
Handing off to Ameya and sending love from Goa!,
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Best beloveds!
It has truly been a very long time—thank you for sticking around. And helloo all our new subscribers. I’m not gonna lie, all those emails from Substack saying you have a new subscriber have definitely provoked some twinges of guilt. Apparently enough for us to try and do this again :D
My updates are quite simple: I moved to Bangalore, my OG cats Sheru and Uggsie immediately went to war and now, 2.5 years later, live entirely separate lives. I also ended up with Dicky, a golden retriever pretending to be a cat, who was a foster fail, and brings us all vast amounts of joy and insanity.
Making this move might have been the best decision of my life. I have managed somehow to find a truly incredible community of friends who love me, support me, and celebrate my weirdness—which is quite a lot—and I wake up every morning grateful and slightly incredulous. Could this really be where that sad, lonely and friendless teenager wound up? That fat girl who was so convinced that she would never be worthy of love, sex, or even friendship. Well, smol Meya, it all worked out in the end, because you opened your heart and you looked inward and, most of all, you did the work. (Shoutout to Judy, my amazing and transformative Jungian astrologer who really is my therapist though she hates the word, who is probably the single most transformative person I’ve known.)
My knees are almost fully back to normal now! Slowly building my fitness back up to where it was in 2020—let me tell you it is HELLA frustrating to know I was there and I’m so far away now. I did manage a lovely long trip in Europe with lots of walking (yay!), standing (yay!!) and climbing of stairs (yay!!!) and have returned more hopeful.
But this is getting absurdly long now, and I better save some things up for future editions :D I shall leave you with a photo of Sir Richard Floofybutt, ginger menace and total cutie.
Oh yes! I also got a lot of tattoos :D
Until next time!
love,
Ameya