Upsize Me!

I was so unbelievably hideously grossly fat yesterday. When I looked in the mirror, I could swear it suppressed a giggle before exchanging some ‘fat jokes’ with the door I squeezed through shortly after. And my footwear groaned. I know that for a fact because they bit me just after they did. And I huffed, puffed and panted all the way down the stairs. Even as I panted in near-total exhaustion, I shuddered to think what the journey up was going to be like! Maybe it is time I got a ventilator and an oxygen tank fixed at the staircase.

But I digress. The issue is not about the staircase. And no. It is not about the ventilator either. It is evidently about the very obviously fat me. And the worst part is that I have no idea how I got this way! It was an altogether different me that arrived in New York City over six months ago…

When my memory spools back to that glorious time when I actually set foot in the land of opportunity (and the Big Apple at that!), I was a strapping young man in the prime of his youth. Okay! I wasn’t stunning looking, but I did get the occasional glance. I was tall (by Indian standards. I still had to come face-to-face with the African-Americans then. Remember?) handsome (Okay. Okay! It could be a matter of perspective) and fabulously fit. No excuses about that. Not only had I been the University sprinting champion, but had also played a number of sports including basketball, tennis and cricket.

And I had secured admission in the City University of New York Tech College (CUNY, not to be confused with the arguably more popular SUNY!) Man! I tell you, it was a brilliant college. As a proud member of the NCAA Div III, this was one college where athletics was more than a way of life. So there was nothing on earth that was going to keep me away from the track. Or so I thought.

Like every newbie Indian in the Big Apple, I initially had some problem with the food. Born and bred on home-cooked, authentic Indian cuisine, I had a wee bit of trouble adapting to the fast foods that seemed to be a way of life in the US. But then, some friendly Indian students showed me the way around the place. The University was in Jay Street. Within a radius of a couple of kilometers, there were around a hundred (I am NOT exaggerating!) Indian Restaurants. The first one I happened to go to was Café Bombay (how apt!) on the nearby Duffield Street.

Like all other good Indian restaurants in the US, this too was run by a friendly Bangladeshi immigrant. But since the food tasted heavenly and was as close to authentic Indian food as you could get, we frequented the place. Soon, we discovered other similar places. And began going there frequently. We went to Amin Indian Cuisine, Bombay Masala Restaurant on 49th Street, Basera North Indian Cuisine, the quaint India Village on 2nd Avenue, Thali Indian vegetarian on Greenwich Avenue, the robust Karahi Indian Cuisine on Broome Street, the fanciful Indian Taj on Bleeker Street, Sheezan Indian Restaurant on Church Street, delectable Curry & Curry on 33rd Street and even India on the Hudson on Washington Street that was relatively far away!

A month or two of this sort of frenetic Indian cuisine hunting and I began to spout paneer butter masala out of my ears. Not to mention a well-proportioned paunch around my midriff. Things actually came to such a pass that the very sight of Indian cuisine began to switch off my appetite. But my friends and I had become such a fixture at the above-mentioned places, that we found it very difficult to tear ourselves away. Fortunately the college canteen came to our rescue. I’d never tasted pretzels before. And suddenly they tasted heavenly. The same was the case with bagels. I was thrilled to discover that they came with all sorts of fillings and toppings. And coffee! Ah! At home, I’d always had freshly brewed filter coffee (40% Peaberry A, 40% Peaberry B and 20% chicory!) Now, I discovered to my joy that there were hundreds of varieties of coffee. And all of them were heavenly. And when I happened to go to the Beach Channel Mart on Court Street, I discovered the difference between the Maharaja Mac back home and the authentic all-American burger!

Thus began my downfall into the abysmal depths of junk-food hell. I soon discovered for instance that the difference between a meal and an upsized option was minimal. Twice the food for one and a half times the price! So I naturally opted for the upsize. And when my local newspaper started offering Mc Donald’s coupons, I sprang and collected them like a starving man. Each coupon got me discounts of up to 3 dollars on a regular meal. Which meant two meals for the price of one. I just freaked out! Life soon became a roller-coaster ride between classes and the canteen, classes and the golden arches, classes and Starbucks and classes and Dunkin’s. The athletics track was conveniently forgotten, my tight-fitting clothes discarded for humungous ‘Brother’ wear — the ‘CUNYform’ as we called it and I kept getting happier and more prosperous looking. In other words — fat!

Till the day my mirror giggled and exchanged some fat jokes with the door. My mirror and my door making fun of me! What did they think? That I didn’t have the willpower to hit the track and sweat the few extra pounds off? I was a sprinter wasn’t I? I could do it anytime. And — as I told myself — I was not eating American junk food because I was mesmerized by it. Oh no! In fact, going by the grease-laden dal tadka and butter masala most Indian restaurants dished out, I was practically on a salad diet! Never mind the fact that I had stepped off the plane like a spring bean and in just six months had become a true Ohio potato!

But nevertheless, I was going to show my furniture their place. As soon as I got back home. That very evening, I took matters into my own hands. I psyched myself up all through the day so that when I got home, I could roll-up my sleeves, firm-up my will and put my heart, soul and body to the task. And to never flinch — till the deed be done and the objective achieved. And I’m proud to say, I did it!

I now no longer have a mirror, and in the place where my door existed there is now a gaping hole that serves me just as well! Not all that remains is to get to the nearest Mc Donald’s and ask them for the biggest, most delicious meal they had. Upsize of course!

Vegetarian woes in a foreign land

’Enough!’ I wanted to scream out loud.

But the words just stuck to my throat. Maybe it was the gooey, gelatinous concoction that kept it there — the over-sugary, dull-as-ditchwater thing that they called coffee! A teardrop almost made its way to the corner of my eye. But I sniffled it away. I must not cry. Not in the neighborhood Starbucks. Not before all these firangs!

So I bravely ate the last of my croissant (I’ll never learn how to correctly pronounce that word!) poured down some more of that ‘coffee’ and tossed in a glass of plain old water for good measure. The whole thing ran down my gullet and landed in my stomach with a thump. A most dis-satisfying thump I might add.

I’d been in America — the land of opportunity, as they called it — for all of five days. But already, the food (or the un-palatability of it) was beginning to make me pine for home. I can’t remember how many times I thought about mom’s cooking in these five days. I dreamt about it. I salivated in my dreams. I even pulled out a photograph of me sitting at the dining table back home, licking-off sambar from my elbow and pasted it on my wall in a fit of nostalgia, and craving.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m a stranger to Mc Donalds, Wimpys and Burger King. I’ve had my fair share of those joints even back home in India. But then, how long can one survive on such ‘junk food’? And that too in a foreign land, when the smallest health issue could prove debilitatingly expensive. At some point one has to get back to the real thing. Like delicious sambar rice, delectable bhindi fry and dependable avakkai pickle. Slurp! Some of this heavenly fare would always be waiting for me when I got home from college. And I would tuck-in till my belly got full and then lie around. Happy and content with the world. But I’m digressing.

You see, I belong to that breed of Indian males who have never entered the kitchen, except by accident. Mom or some female relative was always the person to cook for dad and me. And on the few occasions when we ate out, none of us had to bother beyond ordering from the menu. And when I went to my friends place, my friends’ mothers cooked. It was as simple as that. In all my 21 years in India, I had never been confronted with the need to cook. So, I simply did not know how to!

And I guess I needed to come to the US of A to pay the price. My Indian origins seemed to be conspiring against me. I couldn’t eat meat because I’d always been a vegetarian. Vegetarian food was harder to find than Osama Bin Laden. And even if found, were so expensive, that my automatically convert-to-rupees brain went into a state of shock. So there I was stuck in the land of opportunity, with no means of feeding myself! I simply couldn’t digest the fact!

All these thoughts came whirring back at me as I stepped out of Starbucks. I firmly resolved to do something about it. I had to! Else, I would methodically starve to death. So I got back to my apartment (I was staying alone at present. Two others would be joining me in a week) and arming myself with a guide book and some money, stepped out to seek, bring home, cook and consume.

Almost four hours later, I staggered back, dejected and defeated. I had found nothing. But had discovered a lot of inane things. For instance, never have I been astounded by the range and variety of canned food available. So many shapes, colors and sizes that the mind just reels upon viewing them. Oh! None of them are of any use to me because they all contain slaughtered animals or animal parts. Those that claim not to look suspiciously like they do, and I decided to leave them alone.

Vegetables exist, but none of them seem to be the ones I had seen back home. There is this vegetable that looks like the capsicum, is shaped like the capsicum and even smells like the capsicum. But the helpful grocer insisted on calling it ‘peppers’. Then there’s bread. Whole wheat, white, brown, French… name it and you’ve got it. But seeing all this bread reminded me of the burgers I had been eating. So I moved on.

I saw preserved food (no. They all have monosodium glutamate), a wide range of ready-to-eat snacks (no way. All genetically modified) and even un-heard of chain stores selling all kinds of prepared food (not a chance. All non-vegetarian, mostly beef.) Even the shakes, coffees and smoothies seemed to be made out of all kinds of animal produce! And the Chinese food was like nothing I had ever seen in the myriad Chinese restaurants and pushcarts back home.

So on and on I walked, unable to find even a simple roti or chapatti stall. Nobody in India had warned me about this fate. In fact, all of them went on and on about the thousands of Indian Software professionals here and how Indians had become the third most powerful ethnic group in the US. Indeed! So powerful that their cuisine was nowhere on the map! Or maybe I was unfortunate enough to land in a place populated only by rednecks, African-Americans, Chinese and Hispanics! None of whom had even heard of India.

Morosely, I made my way back to the apartment. And famished, dirty and tired, I crashed onto my bed. I seemed to have reached rock bottom in my quest for palatable food. And there seemed to be no hope, not even a glimmer. As pain from all that walking and tiredness from the futility of my quest began to set in, my eyes wandered towards an Ad in the newspaper. An irritatingly happy Ronald McDonald grinned up at me. And right next to him was the biggest, juiciest veggie bean burger, fries and coke I had ever seen. A big, blazing phone number and message beside it urged me to call. The digits glowing in the mellow light of the golden arches.

My resolve made a feeble attempt to rise and remind me of my afternoon oath. But I pushed it aside and grabbed the nearest phone to punch in the numbers. What can I say? A hungry man has got to do what a hungry man has got to do!