Did Eve ever go on a diet? I mean, wasn't she the one who gave Adam the apple? Frankly, I don't think she cared a fig for thinness. What about old pal Majnu's sweetheart, our own Laila? For an answer, ask the cucumber hawkers in the bylanes of Lucknow, who extol the slimness of their merchandise, hollering: "Laila ki ungliyaan, aur Majnu ki pasliaan [Laila's fingers and Majnu's ribs]." My revered teachers told me that this is a direct reference to the 'fact' that Laila was not the waif-like seductress history would have us believe, but pretty broad in the beam. Poor Majnu, it seems, was quite narrow in the chassis. Which fortifies the doctrine that for Laila it was never a triumph of mind over platter. The reason for my babble is a disgruntled tummy. If an army marches on its stomach, I am as hungry as a soldier ever broke bread. For, since the past few weeks, I've been reliving those frightful days when my stomach used to think my throat had been cut. There was so little traffic from the gullet to the alimentary canal. Those were the times when Mom dear was on a diet. Now, Anjali, my wife is following suit. History is in an encore mode. When the lady of the house has a gut feeling that she's running to fat, it is actually the man about the house whose fat is in the fire. It doesn't make a merry marriage when all your thought is for food and the wife is sick to the stomach with it. So much for getting to a man's heart through his stomach. Pop, however, faced the hunger pangs like a man. I, too, am trying to keep the family tradition alive. Anju has always been pleasantly plump, just chubby enough not to be categorised as fat. Coming from strong stock, she never was really skinny, even in her salad days. Though no longer possessed of a 20-year-old metabolism, she doesn't tip the bathroom scales to the extent where the poor contraption would conk off with a tormented spronggg!, spewing springs in all directions. But try telling her that. She's convinced that her architecture is soon about to resemble that of the Albert Hall, and has proceeded to cold-shoulder all foodstuffs and live on air. Well, almost. The battle of the bulge is on. 'Salad days' have suddenly acquired a new meaning. Subtle hints like her jeans are packing more than they can handle have often landed me in a soup. If you thought asking a woman her age makes her mad, just try guessing her weight. When I see that her jeans would come apart at the seams any moment, but choose to hold my tongue, she reprimands me for 'not noticing' her anymore. "I've put on so much. You should remind me to eat less!" she tells me. Well? It's not the jeans, but the genes really. My in-laws -- no pushovers -- are given to enjoying rather lavish meals. Their robust frames testify this. It takes stout scales to accept the challenge they pose. I am a two-dimensional figure to their 3D expanse. So Anju, fed up with gaining too much weight, has embarked on a crash diet. It's either fat or fit. Girth-control takes precedence over all else. Influenced by her friends who seem obsessed with thinness, and spurred by magazines featuring scrawny, airbrushed models with 'thin thighs' and 'fantastic abs', she's now embracing a strict regimen. 'Say cheese' is no longer a matter to smile over at home. She's bought kitchen scales (she's very serious about this and will measure the weight of everything she eats, not to mention the calories). It's no cakewalk, trying to live on 5 ounces of bread, 6 ounces of dal, a spoon-full of rice, 2 sawdust-like biscuits, an apple, a bit of skimmed milk, low-calorie sweeteners, a salad of a few grass sprigs, a tablespoon of oil... A mouse would starve on it. But she's a glutton for punishment: hectic exercising at the neighbourhood gym, furious peddling on a stationary bicycle, replacing cheeseburgers with tomatoes, cakes with air, food with water... driving herself to thinness. I have started to look upon the kitchen scales as an instrument of torture, but you can't bite the hand that feeds you, so instead I bite the bullet. The stomach grumbles at being introduced to such poor fare. Me? I don't have any weight-gain problems. Built along the Euclidean model of a thin straight line, I belong to that category of humans which counts its weight in grams rather than kilos. Ingestion of loads of Epicurean delicacies has failed to add even an ounce of fat to my slim framework and I remain languishing for that extra coat of beef on my singularly slender self. But people never seem to pass even the thinnest of chances to comment on my weight, or the lack of it. Smart Alecs ask me to hold on to something heavy lest I be blown away with the faintest of breezes. "Don't worry, he's clutching a cigarette," others butt in. Some wonder where I tie my pants. Others claim I'm a perfect study in anatomy. From barik, single-haddi, dedh pasli, to a bag of bones, I've been splattered with numerous unflattering adjectives. There are those who are ready to bet it'll take two of me to make a shadow. To others my photographs are like X-ray films and they hold that I must have tumbled out of my own cupboard. Yet, being slender has never been a matter of despair for me. It's only corpulent lumps of lard, envious of my sleek aerodynamic structure, who find fault with me. Envy takes no holidays, I muse. Thin is in. From watches to waists. No wonder so many health clubs are mushrooming around. Talk about living off the fat of the land. Be that as it may, I hog a lot and a dieting wife isn't really the ideal setting for a four-course banquet. Don't get me wrong. It's not that she doesn't cook things I love. She does, but how can you ask for extra helpings of your favourite dishes when the better half is trying to live on a couple peas floating in watery soup? If only it were as easy to exchange fat as it is to exchange vows, she'd be happy as a lark. And probably as light. Isn't marriage all about sticking together through thick and thin? Yet, bellies have a mind of their own. They don't give a damn what the heart feels. So I try to strike a balance between the two. But, between giving in alternatively to a full heart and an empty tummy, I find myself hungry enough to eat a horse. How long can one eat out? Stealthy, nocturnal visits to the fridge and the larder bear no fruit. So how does one save one's bacon? However, empty bellies don't promote stellar thinking. Soon a friend invited us for dinner. The hostess was shocked to see me tuck in as much as I did. But what the heck, the grey cells were fired up. They stood up, dusted their trousers and began moving about briskly. An idea was about to be born. I told Anju that it was a long time since I visited her parents. A visit would be ideal. Meantime, I could picture myself digging into all those delicacies that ma-in-law prepares. But the better half is too clever by half and some things are never meant to be. "Fat chance!" she laughed. "My mom's on a diet, too!" Shishir Bhate is looking for friends who'll invite him for dinner. Tell us what you think of this diary
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