As age and I start to become increasingly old friends, eating sensibly becomes ever more important. There was a time, and I assure you this is true, when eating two steak burgers at Burger King wasn’t out of the ordinary, or having two sizzlers at The Place. The tummy was a lot more accommodative during those days, and life was good.
These days, though, the stomach has read up on its Hamlet. It doth protest too much.
And so, I’m reduced to just the one sizzler when I go to The Place, and if I must be completely honest even that isn’t the ironclad guarantee it might have been at one point of time. I have become, I realize to my chagrin, that thing the younger me would have abhorred: a sensible eater.
A light breakfast, a lighter lunch and a spartan dinner is par for the course these days, and my tummy thanks me for it. Except, and this is my gripe in this column, when it rains.
The rains do a lot of good to this city. It is green, the hills are positively alive with shrubbery, and everything has a clean, washed fresh look. Not to mention petrichor, which is proof that god exists, and is a mostly ok fellow.
But how, dear reader, to inform stomach that the regular programme of dal chawal and a nice light bhindi preparation makes sense, and will not be replaced with piping hot kanda bhaji and steaming mugs of adrak chai? Or even better, gloriously plump tandoori chicken and the odd splash of rum in welcoming glasses? To be followed with, I’d humbly suggest, the occasional gulab jamun (or maybe ten).
When the elements are having a party outside the window, and the skies are dark and grey and gloomy, and the wind howls a song about the cold and the rain – then, I maintain, there is no point in being sensible.
I’d recommend the following steps:
One, open up your favourite food delivery app, and hit up your favourite neighbourhood restaurant. Ignore all restaurants that serve salads and greens, if you really want to follow my instructions to the letter. Order what you will, and heaps of it. Do not – and this is really important – forget dessert.
Now, once the app informs you that it will take about forty minutes for delivery, bring out the old bottle, and pour yourself a really generous measure. Strengthen your spirit by taking repeated sips while you quickly whip together a batch of kanda bhaji (or onion pakoras, if you insist). Spend the next half hour in depleting and replenishing your plate and your glass. Twice, if you share my outlook towards life.
Open the door once the doorbell rings, and tip lavishly. Spend the next hour finishing all of what has been procured, preferably in the company of another generous measure of whatever is in the bottle.
And then, when all of this has been done, take your sensible diet out the back, and shoot it in the privates. That is the very least it deserves, that evil unspeakable abomination.
He doesn't expect the paradox to be resolved in his lifetime
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