It was Easter again and I had obtained my hard earned day off to go home in the loving shelter of the parental home down south in Cochin. I was all set for the feasting, sharing, feasting and feasting that was part of the annual ritual. And I had a particularly good feeling about this year, cos a lot of relatives were also in Cochin for the event. Surely, it would be a blast, I reasoned. I was pretty sure that there was a lot more to the season than just the feast, but I was alright with that. The important thing was that I’d be meeting a lot of cousins and aunts this time… it’d be nice to feast with them. They can indulge in all the other easter activities as much as they want to.

But as it turns out, the hottest topic this Easter was not the big J.C. or how he wiped our sin-filled slate clean about 20 centuries back. Nope. At least not among the relatives I visited, the relatives who visited me, or the distressed parents. No, siree. For them, the hottest topic in town was the case of my expanding girth.

Not that I would blame them. The Hammy tummy has been on an incessant, unauthorized and unwarranted expansion plan for quite some time now. It is rapidly reaching the point where I should be afraid to walk along the beaches. It’s frightful, you know… What if some kind of fanatic, nearsighted, environmental nutcase turns up, and in the name of, say, the ‘Save the whales‘ foundation, throws me ‘back’ into the ocean, doing the victory-dance version of ‘Doo-wah-diddy-diddy’?

I know what some of you are thinking right now.. You’re thinking,”Hoy, Hammy, old boy. You’re getting paranoid. Be realistic! Whatever nutcase you’re talking about up there… chances are that he probably can’t even lift you up, leave alone THROW you. I mean… look at yourself, for Christ’s sake…”

To those some-of-you, let me ask just ONE thing - “What about forklifts? Huh? What if they used forklift. Ever think about that, chump? Do you have any idea how much weight those things can carry around? A well built forklift can fling an elephant across a football field as easily as you would toss pankakes over a frying pan. Let that be a lesson to you. Always think things through before coming up with half baked objectio…”

Hold it. Wait a minute. I went overboard there. That was uncalled for. And very possibly has factual inaccuracies. Personally, I’ve never seen or heard of an elephant being tossed around by forklifts. In fact, unless I miss my bet, they haven’t even shown a movie like that yet. I guess we’ll just leave the whale-beach analogy to the experts (Greenpeace), and move on.

What I meant to say is that my relatives were not off the mark when they commented on the weight that I had put on. I accept the charges of voluntary gluttony. I accept that I have occupied far more territorial space than that alloted to each individual.

But my pleading guilty was not enough to stop the discussion.

“What the!! Hammy! Is that you? Am I seeing double?”

—

“Whoa, there’s no WAY that is you, Hammy. You’ve stuffed your shirt with feathers, haven’t you?”

—

“Oh, my God, Hammy. Just looking at you makes me want to poke your stomach with a really large needle in the desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, you simply have a fully inflated balloon stuffed in that horrendous T-shirt.”

—

The fact is… I’ve always been a major foodie, and often take keen interest in tasting morselfuls of varied delicacies across a wide variety of cuisines, putting ardent concentration in the task, pausing only for brief intervals in which to utter the words “I’d like to have another plate of this thingamajig right here.”

I’m not a medical man, but I have a fairly good idea that my tendency to dive head first into my plate whenever I see good food is not helping my weight problem. It may be time to put the courageous, death defying superhero, Captain Eatathon to rest on his laurels, except for the very real danger that he may feel the necessity to eat them… the laurels, I mean. But if Captain Eatathon is to retire, even for a while, this means… a d-d…

I mean a d-d-d… daft… No, dammit, I can say it… It’s time for a d-d-d-dialect. NO! A dayet. A driet. A dofet, a ditey, a do-it, a die-yet, a dryet…

Pant pant pant pant.. Phooo… You have to forgive me for a minute here. I need to catch my bvreath.

I am, finally, with the help of close friends and family who shouted into my ear like they expected a resounding echo from the Grand Canyon, facing the prospect of a… diet. There. I said it. I knew I could do it. Phew.

A diet? Whoa! A DIET??? What the?? What am I gonna do with a DIET?? Dang! I’d better chew on this for a while. Unless, of course, you think it might be fattening.

It seemed like any other day… My work for the day was done, I had grumbled enough about having to work on a Saturday, and it was evening. My brother and I began the customary search for a place to snack. He had a bike… So geography wasn’t a boundary. We can go anywhere within reasonable limits… try someplace new. The debate was still going on in full swing when suddenly… it started to drizzle. This rather helped the decision making process. Our choices were suddenly given boundaries. Boundaries of proximity…

An unexpected rain is rarely seen in a positive light. Mostly, the reactions tend to be based around “Goddamn it!!“, “Oh, no. Here goes the day“, and “Holy Beelzebub, Batman. It’s raining!!“. Ok, so not everyone would hate the rain… I’m sure that a lot of farmers would start singing in joy, pausing to kiss the mud in reverent thanks to the rain god… And some braindead Bollywood addict would take the opportunity to run out and sing love songs. But let’s face it. There aren’t many farmers in Bangalore, unless you consider growing weed as agriculture… And as far as braindead B. addicts are concerned, even without the rain, they would be just as happy if they get a tree to run around once in a while.

In any case, we decided to wait at the Sweet Chariot outlet nearby until the drizzle stopped, which I estimated to take about fifteen minutes or so. As far as predicting the weather was concerned, I was all wet, which, incidentally proved to be a very prophetic statement. Fifteen minutes of wait, and the drizzle seemed to get steadier and steadier.

My brother’s always been more patient than me, which is not saying much, seeing that I start mumbling at supermarket billing counters, even though there’s only one bloke ahead of me. It was still drizzling when I started pestering my brother…

“Hey, come on… It’s just a little drizzle. We can’t wait here all day, can we?”
“By the time we start the bike and move, the drizzle would have stopped…”
“Hey, maybe it’s only raining HERE… We just have to get out of this location and we’re home free”
“Oh, so you called your friends, eh? So it’s raining even at home, eh? Well, that just means that the rain is not going to end anytime soon. Are we going to wait here endlesly? Huh? Huh?”

I can never overstate the power of persistence. It took only half an hour of similar statements before my brother started ignoring the voice of reason and listening to moi… We set out in the light drizzle, with the unsaid hope of impending weather calmness… People PAY when they listen to the voice of moi… And we paid big time.

The rain gods, being miffed by the Hammy scorn and apathy yet again, huffed and puffed and blew the house down… metaphorically speaking. Five minutes after we set for home, it was raining cats, dogs, and other assorted farmyard animals… the Gods mocked us with their thunder and lightning. Whatever the cause, I was wetter than a sponge buried at sea.

“So, bro”, my brother shouted over the chatter of raindrops that kept falling on my head,”I guess we’ll keep the trip to the mall for some other day, huh?”

Sound advice. We had plans to visit ‘Star Bazaar‘, the mall in Koramangala, on our way back, We needed to buy… well, we needed to look around and see if there could be something we could buy. That’s the thing about malls. You keep wanting to visit, whether or not an actual need is present.

In light of the current downpour situation, the prudent step was to postpone the not-so-urgent time-wasting charade at the mall for a a sunnier day…. literally a sunnier day… What possible good can come of us wandering in the store like that? At best, we’d get some snacks to munch on, but for that, we’d have to wade through an army of incredulous wide eyed dry folks who would be plainly wondering whether we may be some aquatic sea-creatures who needed to be thrown back into the sea. No good can come of it. It’s best to just go home, get dry, and save the mall trip for later.

“What? Another day?? We do NOT back down just because of a little rain, alright? That is NOT what we do. We are going to march right there as planned. Because THAT is what we DO!! No buts. We’re going.”

So my brother listened to the voice of moi once again. (He just won’t learn, will he?) So we entered the mall, dripping wet, causing stares by people who looked like they were expecting a circus act… “Ladies and gentlemen… presenting… The HUMAN water fountain”. People were looking at me as if they thought I was manufcaturing all the water there…

“Yeah, buddy. I’m fusing hydrogen and oxygen in there… My body’s a fusion reactor…”
“Hmm… I’d believe it. God knows you have enough space in there to hide a fusion reactor…”

Snide remarks aside, it didn’t help that the place was air conditioned. The water from the cold hard rain that was sticking to my skin were getting even cooler. I was wondering whether I should go hug an attendant for body warmth…. but I didn’t see anyone huggable over there at the time. It was a lost cause. I should just call it quits, shake my head, get out of the store, and head off home. There’s no shame in admitting you were wrong… or pigheaded…

Just when I was wondering how to broach the topic with Lewin, HE started it for me…

“Sheesh, bro… It’s cold… c-o-l-d- cold… I think we should just bolt out of here, go home, dry ourselves. What do you think?”

Hurrah!! An escape clause… At last. All I needed to do was agree with him and we were both home free… no longer facing the grim prospect of freezing to death in the grocery section. Trust me, you do NOT want your eulogy to read “Here lies Hammy. Buried under an avalanche of frozen green peas.”, particularly if your name isn’t ‘Hammy’. But I had an escape clause in hand… A ticket back to life itself.

“Huh? You want to quit?? Listen to yourself. You want to give IN to a little cold? I don’t think so, brotha. You do what you want. I stay.”

Me and my big mouth. Why? Why?? Why do I say things like these? I was dripping cats and dogs…. well, kittens and puppies at least… The cold air was starting to make icicles out of them, and I was tired of all the muffled stares and distant mutters… All I needed to do… was remain silent.

My tongue wags in mysterious ways. Not for long, though, if I stay in the mall long enough. It’s already getting stiff…

There is no doubt about it. We live a fast world. We are obsessed with an overwhelming need to save time. We want fast cars, fast food, express freeways, accelerated growth plans, quick answers, speedy remedies, executive summaries, swift justice, express deliveries, snappy comebacks, instant messages, quick routes, minimal delays, fast-tracked careers, expedited reports, rapid progressions, immediate solutions, swift replies, and in the workplace, we tend to end mails with ‘ASAP’.

People forget that sometimes, you have to stop to smell the roses. Of course, it doesn’t help that we can’t seem to find roses aplenty in the city.But does that mean we can ignore the need for enjoying the small pleasures of life? Maybe the solution is not ignoring the luxury of leisure. Maybe we should just grow some roses of our own. The rose here is more than a flower. It is a concept. It is a speed-breaker; an anti-haste agent; a red sign in the traffic signal of the sinews of…

Dang! I’m pretty sure I drifted off to a random tangent somewhere up there, but damned if I know where. Darned random tangents! I gotta get back on track here…

Now what track was I on? Oh, yeah. Our postmodern hyperspeed culture…. Now, don’t get me wrong; I am not averse to technology. Oh, no. I am one of the most vocal advocates for efficiency. Hey, I’m an engineering graduate. Boosting efficiency is a psychedelic high for me. It may make me weird, but at least I don’t have to shell out drug money. So what, you may ask, is the reason for my sudden attack on speed?

Some of you may have guessed that I’m talking about traffic. I have to admit that’s not a far fetched thought. In this fair city, people drive with reckless abandon… Many of our cars are driven by brain-dead chimpanzees with drinking disorders. At least, I HOPE they are chimpanzees. If they are actual human beings, I have serious doubts about the theory of evolution. And they are not the worst threat to our traffic. Not by a long margin. Not while my friends, the auto drivers are around.

Grown men could pee in their pants seeing how the deft auto-driver rolls over sideways from an apparently bottlenecked traffic jam, veers off into a parallel lane, and does stunts that would make John Woo jump up and say “No way. They must be using wires to do this trick.” No, you may NOT assume that I have peed in my pants. I have NOT. It was just a figure of speech. Honest.

We DO have traffic problems, but with the bumper-to-bumper traffic that characterizes rush hour for us, it SPEED is rarely a problem here. So, no. I wasn’t talking about traffic.

Weekends are a time of sluggish laze. I try to savour the moment by staying in bed and snore in joyous cacophony until my brother kicks me off the bed with one solid swoop, reminding me ever so subtly that I can never be sure whether or not he may be taking karate lessons. And I try to ensure that the same sluggish atmosphere is maintained in all activities.

Weekend lunch time is typically spent in specially swank restaurants, where elegant waiters take care of everything but chewing the food and paying the bill. But not today, oh, no.

My brother and I went to a reputed Chinese restaurant. We had been there before… and had received decent, though not extraordinary service at those times. But today, the staff was running around like demons possessed. It was like be-a-superhero day for them. Every time a table gave their order, the waiters seem to think ‘This is a job… for Superman‘. Waiters and managers were flying from table to table at superspeed, banging dishes on the tables, slapping portions into individual plates, and clearing tables in the blink of an eye, sometimes even before the customers get up from their chairs. Sure, on and off, they spilled water, messed up some dishes, and scattered the toothpicks when they slammed it on the table, but that’s a small price to pay for getting the customers to vacate their chairs so that others may get to stare at the same service. You don’t see superman apologizing for spilling water as he whizzes by, do you?

And by the time we were almost done, we had the check ready and at the table. This was good. But the manager checking every fifteen seconds if I had left my credit card for him to collect… that was not… They were so hurried up that if they had the legal option, they would have shoveled the chop suey right down our throats, pocketed the money, and kicked us out while still smiling enigmatically.

This would have been ok if it was a fast food joint. It wasn’t. Dining isn’t just about quenching hunger; fine dining is an experience. Of course, there are times when you need to somersault right into your dish and glug it up like you were trying to break a record, but that shouldn’t be your default setting.

Like most things in life, if you don’t spend time on something properly, time will spend you.

Yesterday was a bad day. Little demons with big pointy sticks poked the insides of my skull; Tiny clones of Himesh Reshammiya sat next to my eardrums and shrieked at the top of his irksome nasal voice; my old economics professor popped up like an inebriated jack-in-the-box every time I blinked, just to ask me questions like “If you take the GDP of the country and measure a diminishing return on it against your current salary, then how long do you think this sentence needs to be to before you start questioning your own sanity?”

In other words, I had a headache.

No. It wasn’t one of your ordinary run-of-the-mill headaches. It was the kind that makes you think “Oh, my God, who are these aliens and what are they doing sawing my brain in half? If they wanted it so bad, they could have just asked me!!“. It was the kind that makes you want to rent a plane and sky-dive without the customary parachute, taking precautions to land on your head.

Now headaches like these do not come without a cause. If I were sane and rational, I would have rushed off into a hospital and shrieked for the nearest doctor available, holding a nurse hostage until I was given the priority I deserved. But I was neither. In fact, I was less than neither. I was too lazy to go to a hospital, and crazy to boot. Since I had a fair bit of experience in the medical field, I decided I had to try and analyze myself. This may seem rational and sane to most people…. unless they knew that the medical ‘experience’ I was talking about was limited mostly to watching old videos of House MD and Scrubs regularly for the past 18 weeks.

Now, what caused this headache? There are several causes for headaches such as smoking, stress, concussion, trauma, psuedotumour, stroke, light sensitivity and eyestrain. I decided to weigh in all the explanations I could think of.

1. I was having a hangover.

Hmmm… Nah. This can’t be it. I don’t drink too much. I don’t get drunk. And I definitely didn’t go drinking day before yesterday. So this theory’s knocked out the metaphorical window.. unless… UNLESS… unless I DO drink too much at times; only, I drink SO much that I don’t even remember that I drank at all, and I drank as much that night!! I have to check that out. How do I check that out? I can simply ask my friends. You see, I never drink alone. If I DO drink, I go out with friends, chug a few drinks and call it a night. So I should be able to track if I DID drink last night. That should be helpful, unless… UNLESS…. unless I DO drink alone at times, and at those times, I drink SO much that I don’t even remember that I drank at all, and I drank as much that night!! Dammit. I have to leave this thread of thought. It’s beginning to scare me.

2. It’s a tumor

Ok, I change my opinion about point 1. THIS is scary. Let’s just ignore this possibility and hop along to the next contemplation. What? What do you mean denial is the first stage?

3. My headband was TOO tight.

Now this is a handy solution. It is a rare kind of solution which does not scare me, and at the same time, is easily remediable. All I have to do is take off the headband and let the blood circulate freely. I also get a handy anecdote to relate at parties…. “You’ll never guess what happened to me. I had a REALLY bad headache, and I tried all sorts of stuff, but blah blah yada yada… it turned out my headband was just too tight. Silly me, huh?” So this was the perfect solution. I was praying for this to be the solution. I checked. Nope. I wasn’t wearing a headband. Dang. Another theory shot to hell.

4. I was trying to avoid work.

Nice one. SImple, elegant, plausible… a classic. Except today was a Sunday. And I didn’t carry any work home this Sunday. So that’s out of the picture…

5. Hey, work needn’t be office work. Maybe I just wanted to avoid writing a new post on my blog

Hey, that’s simply not true. You know I like writing here… If there was an India Pak match on TV, I’d miss it to write this blog. If there was a church service going on, I’d miss it to write this blog. If there was a pottery contest going on, I’d miss that to write on this blog. If there was a mega movie marathon in the local theatre, I’d copy some old article I’d written and paste it on this blog before I ran to the theatre as if my pants were on fire. Nope. This is not it.

6. Maybe it’s some voodoo thing. Maybe I’ve been Fatwaed by somebody!!

Now, I have to admit that I don’t really know what it means… or if being fatwaed involves getting splitting headaches. But I considered this possibility until the author, Chelle, said she would never fatwaa me, because I am her number one fan. So sweet, don’t you think?

7. I have been watching too many movies.

Ha! And a double Ha to you. Of COURSE I’ve been watching ‘too many movies’. I have been watching ‘too many movies’ ever since I was five. In fact, if, at any time or day, someone were to ask you “Hey, what’s new with Hammy? What’s he doing?“, and you reply “Well, I don’t know exactly what he’s doing at the moment, but I DO know that he is watching ‘too many movies’ right about now.“, it’s a safe bet that you’re darned right. This is like saying Dick Cheney had an attack because he was breathing at the time. So no. This isn’t it.

8. It’s something I ate.

Stands to reason. In the past 48 hours, I have eaten noodles, idly, chop suey, rice, dhaal, chappati, fried chicken, burgers, french fries, egg toast, wantons, fried rice , chicken puffs, cake and sweets. Not really in a position to claim the prize for an ideal diet, and I doubt if these things do me any good, but does it explain my headache? I don’t know. I’ll need to revisit this idea later. Right after my pack of potato chips.

9. I’m not sleeping properly

If I had to name a dog right now, I’d call it Bingo. I hate to admit it, but I’ve been sleeping real late these days, using one excuse or the other. I may be watching a movie on the comp, or I may be reading a book (ok, ok, a comic book) late at night… I’d deny this… try to keep a straight face… But then I look at the clock and see that I am still writing this post at 3:40 a.m. and I have to slap my forehead and admit my insomnia.

10. It’s OCD… Obsessive Compulsive Behavior

Could be…. Seeing as how I got convinced by point number 9 and still couldn’t resist putting in one more point to make it an even 10… yeah. This can lead to headaches. I don’t know how, but I’m pretty sure it can.