In praise of shamelessness

I went to a supermarket in loose pants and papa’s T-shirt. R said she wishes she was as confident as me. I don’t think I am confident, never have; and yet, I hear this a lot. When I cut my hair short, color my hair, wear a bikini, or that one time when I walked around the venue of an Art Science festival’s inauguration ceremony in a dhoti draped over my dress (long story), I get called confident. And here I am assuming confidence must feel like something, not just the lack of care; that it’ll make me feel sure of myself or at least sure of this one thing I seem confident about, I would even take a bloated chest for a sign. I feel none of that. I don’t not care about people’s opinions either. and today, while watering my plats, I figured out why this cheap replica of confidence is confused with the real thing. I was watering my aloe vera after 2 weeks of neglect. Dadi saw my guilt and said “Don’t worry about this plant, it’s a shameless kind. Neglect it or over water it, they’ll keep being” aah! I thought and I a bulb appeared over my head. What people think of as confident is just shamelessness. I don’t care if people at the supermarket or the inauguration think I have a warped sense of style or that I am narcissistic. I just wasn’t brought up with the nicest clothes and haircuts (I wore any clothing sold by Apna Bazaar that resembled my friend’s which were picked by her mother. The hair, I neither had an option nor an opinion about; oiled plaits with a sharp parting. I got made fun of, even bullied: I had an aunt who annually (& theatrically) called me gavar, told my cousins that my clothes are gross, my hair worse, and that my jawline or lips would take surgeries to fix) I was 10 with no way to change any of the above; and honestly, they didn’t seem like a priority when Mumma was in the asylum. So I thought: this is what it is and it will have to keep not defining who I am. I studied, read, and cared only about growing up. What I am trying to get at is: I don’t want majoritarian/abilist rules to define my mental health and how it seems, my career, life, biological clock, and how they seem. I don’t aim to be confident about my choices pertaining to them. Confidence is hard. I just want to be an Aloe Vera.