Raw was never for me

Eating things uncooked is an absolute sign of disrespect to our forefathers who discovered the pleasures and uses of fire. A spot of raw on a dinner plate, in the form of a salad or sashimi or tartare or carapaccio or sushi does take a lot of gumption and is an acquired taste. Is it any surprise that a person who chows down a salad for a meal is asked whether s/he is on diet? Raw ensures that there is nowhere the taste of the vegetable or meat can hide. Of-course, in the case of salads, people do add a dash of dressing, but this is more akin to a bikini. The only way I imagine people so willingly do this to themselves is because the salad morphs into that magic mirror which shows a slimmer/prettier/handsomer version of their current selves.

But then I gave in

So you can imagine my trepidation when I opened the box containing the juicer. Reading the instructions made my heart beat to a tattoo that would have humbled the RPM of the juicers engine. The key, the manual stated, was to only use juicy vegetables and not pulpy or mushy ones like squash. With this information, I ventured to the market and got myself vegetables that I had seen on display in juice kiosks during my early morning sweaty jaunts.

I knew one vegetable was going to be as bad as the other and I also understood the pain I would be going though as I sipped the juice. Therefore I just hacked myself some carrots, bitter gourd, cucumber, bottle gourd and, with what was prescient vengeance, gleefuly put them through the grind. The juicer screamed in protest, was it the sound I would make with the first gulp of the vegetable juice? Then dribblets of juice began to appear, which turned into an outpouring of colour depending on the vegetable that was being ground. Simultaneously the machine began to violently spit out the ground veggies.

Less juice, more waste

It was quite a shock to see the quantum of ground veggies to the juice that was extracted from them. For a glass of awful tasting juice I had put an inordinate amount of veggies in. There was a clear imbalance between the input and the desired quantity of output. This health fetish journey that I was going to sip from was going to be wasteful. Not to mention, expensive too.

Something needed to be done, because I always had an opinion about those actors, models and health junkies who would proudly state that their breakfast consisted of ‘an omelette of 6 egg whites’. I always wondered where the yolks went. Did they go to make a custard for the evening? Or to brown a pie that was going to be baked? Or was it given to the servants? Maybe, it was just washed down the kitchen sink.

Given that I was not rich nor a wastrel, or a model or health junkie I had to do something with the ground vegetables. What could be done I wondered? And then it hit me that these could be made into vegetable cutlets or even into a vegetable dish. I tried my hand with a vegetable dish, I chopped some onions and browned them then added garlic and ginger to taste along with turmeric and garam masala. Finally, I added the ground vegetables and after some time a bit of hot water. I let the dish cook till the water had evaporated.

I hate to say this, but I think I have become a culinary alchemist. The dish was delicious, I swear. How can you go wrong with browned onions, ginger, garlic, and Indian spices? I have not grown any slimmer, my skin is not glowing and my hair continues to grey. Though I must tell you, my experiments with the juicer have continued. Somewhere it must be doing me good; check back with me when I am in my seventies. However, in the meantime I am going to add the byproducts of the juicer to idli and dosa batter. Who knows, I may begin using the juicer for fresh fruit juice and then start a line of preserves.

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Yes!

Do you wish you could click on ‘Skip ad’ every time an ad starts?

How did I know?

Congratulations! You are completely normal. Studies suggest that 84 per cent of Indians switch the channel as soon as a commercial break starts on TV while the remaining 16 per cent don’t do it because they were watching Doordarshan and fell asleep.

My experience in an ad agency

I worked as a copywriter at an ad agency once. It’s the closest I’ve been to committing suicide, except that suicides are quick and you don’t have to wait for a client’s approval. What made it even more dreadful was the fact that they asked me to handle a sanitary napkin brand. Though, they learnt shortly that they never should have given a 21-year-old, idiotic, fresh out-of-college guy sanitary pads to work with, especially if he drops coffee on his desk… often.

While working there I realised that every client wants three things—a bigger logo, an ‘out-of-the-box’ idea and a ‘viral’ video. And while it’s practically impossible to nail all three every time, these days we do get to see some creative masterpieces from across the world on the internet. But turn on the idiot box just for a day and you will realise that so many of the Indian advertising brains are still stuck in the 90s.

Hair-raising ads

Take the anti-dandruff shampoo ads for example. All the guy does is slide his palm through his hair, and all of a sudden there’s what looks like a five-kilo talcum powder build up on his silk black shirt. It’s like someone tore a packet of salt right over his head. How can a person have so much dandruff? The only way that could have happened is if you’ve not washed your hair in all your life.

Talking about anti-dandruff shampoos, I saw this ad that asked its viewers, “Do you have the license to wear black?” Firstly, that’s racist. And secondly, what is the procedure to acquire this license? Do you first get a learner’s license where you can only wear grey for the first two months?

Every time I saw that ad, I imagined a long queue outside a pub caused by a nakabandi where traffic cops are checking your license to wear black. If you don’t have one, you’re stripped off your black shirt and are given a tailor’s contact details.

Glowing assurances

Shirts are also a prominent part of another clichéd concept for detergent powder ads. All detergent ads seem to have this constant character—Ziddi Daag. He’s been the permanent cast of every washing soap ad for over a decade now. He’s so stubborn he refuses to move. He’s like the Anna Hazare of daags, he just sits on a hunger strike on your shirt. But then, the powder enters like Kejriwal and wipes out Anna Hazare in a clean sweep. At the same time, your shirt starts glowing as if it is made of 100 per cent radium.

Instant everything

My favourite of the lot are the deodorant commercials. A nerdy dude sprays some on his body and suddenly all the rejected Victoria’s Secret Angels descend upon him. If this process worked in real life, it would save parents a lot of trouble of finding the right match for their son’s arranged marriage.

Since the ads show instant attraction, why can’t spraying deo give me an instant MBA degree? And ladies, it’s really shallow how you love a man for his fragrance and not his personality. We have a heart too. We’re beautiful inside.

Lighten up

Don’t even get me started on those fairness cream ads. The ads show that those creams are so intense, the girl transforms from Balika Vadhu to Bipasha Basu to Britney Spears, all in one week. And to prove it, these ads have a seven-day fairness measurement strip with the seven shades of the girl’s face.

What I’d like to know is that if the fairness cream is so strong, what happens if you apply it for two weeks instead of one? What’s the end result then?

If Day 7 is fair, then

Day 8 – fairer

Day 9 – fairest

Day 10 – Michael Jackson

Day 11 – Neil Nitin Mukesh

Day 12 – Voldemort

Day 13 – Saint-Gobain glass

Day 14 – Mr India winner

Also the girl who wants to become fair is shown to have aspirations of being either an actress or a model. Obviously, it is only by using this product that she is able to join the Forbes 100 Most Influential People list.

But for once, I’d like to see an ad featuring a girl with a normal job, like a nurse. I’d imagine an ad that shows a lonely depressed nurse who works in a government hospital. She makes such little money that she does her shopping from local stores and only during the sale season. One day out of frustration, she wants to kill herself, but just then someone hands her some fairness cream. After a week, she not only becomes fairer, but she also transforms from a government hospital nurse to an orthopaedic surgeon in a prestigious hospital.

In the end, I’d like to say just one thing: the next time you go shopping don’t buy your insecurities.

This was first published in the January 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Visit to the path lab

But coming back to the poking story, the high scores on the testing kit increased my blood pressure. So that same week I underwent a ‘Complete Body Executive Health Checkup’ [the bigger the name of the test, the more expensive it is]. Here, I would like to share an important feedback to the owners of these pathological labs—please, please give us a disposable cutlery set + disposable plastic gloves along with the container to collect the samples you need. It will make our life much simpler and less disgusting.

Later, I went to my family doctor with the reports and he became teary eyed looking at them—no, not because the results were bad but because his name was not mentioned in the ‘Referred by Dr.’ column. He had just lost a hefty commission from the path lab.

Anyway, the results were very clear: I had two slow and silent killers inside my body [and one not so silent one on the outside—my wife]. I was finished! My well-meaning doc told me the only way to stop this was to lose weight and the best way to do so was to go to a ‘Dietitian’. Oh! How I cringed at the word. I had been to dieticians earlier on several occasions and I truly believed that they were sent on our planet by Satan just to torment us. They starve you, make you exercise and still find fault with you. And yes, they do make you lose weight right from day one—by emptying your wallet.

My new diet

Fortunately, I found a dietitian close to my house. Her first question to me was: do you eat non-veg? And when I replied in the affirmative, she made a face that made me feel like a voracious cannibal who had just eaten half of Mumbai. No wonder every dietitian I have met has been a vegetarian or worse, a vegan. After all, no sane non-veg eating individual would ever become a dietitian—we all love our food very much!

Non-veg diet notwithstanding, my dietitian promised me that I would lose around one kilo of weight per week if I followed the diet to the ‘T’ and exercised one hour daily. I was skeptical, but decided to give it my best shot. And guess what—it worked! I lost 14kg in around 14 weeks and overall lost 22kg! One thing that changed for me was that I finally began to enjoy exercising.

The new me

I am enjoying the new me because I’ve been getting a lot of compliments. Having moved from a size XXL to size M, waist size from 39 to 32, I can see my man-hood by just looking down [it’s not a pretty sight anyway]. Most of the tires around my waist too have disappeared. So have my man-boobs. I have discovered new bones in my body and best of all; the blood sugar level in my body is back to normal.

Sorry mum and dad—I rejected your inheritance!

 This was first published in the May 2014 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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