Chewing the Fat
I turned 55. I don’t think that’s old, a lot of really famous people accomplished great things after 55. For example, Mr.Morarji Desai discovered the secrets of urine therapy and went on to become Prime Minister of India. And it was ex-Prime Minister Deve Gowda who discovered that sleeping in the opposition benches in Parliament produced enormous amounts of drool.
When I turned 50 (5 years ago if memory serves me) my Doctor Uday, who is a pretty decent guy ordinarily, made me promise to get a complete physical every year. He called me into his clinic, put on a scary rubber glove and made sudden lunges at my personal regions, all the while asking me to cough. I have decided therefore to space out my physicals only to those times when I actually experience physical pain, or my hair falls out, whichever is the latter.
Also Uday has a lady nurse who works with him – a charming young thing – but one who belongs to the Transylvanian Vampirical Society (Motto: Do not let patients leave the clinic with any of their blood) She distracts you with charming conversation, subtly sticks a needle, with a large tube attached, into your arm, and the next thing you hear before you pass out, is a gurgling sound from said tube that leads to a huge overhead tank with the word BLOOD stencilled on the side.
I thought I had come through my physical in great shape. However I hadn’t counted on Uday’s adherence to the medical code which states:
“I swear by my Mercedes Benz, that I will find something medically wrong with any person who steps into my clinic, even the postman.”
The precedent to this of course is the Hippocratic oath, named after the famous Greek Philosopher Aristotle who became known as the Father of Modern Medicine after he invented the following phrases :
- you may experience some pain
- we have to run some tests first
- the tests were not very clear
- we are going to have to carry out some more tests
- does your company reimburse your medicals or do you have medical insurance?
As one can see, without those phrases, modern medicine would be impossible.
And so Uday, realizing he would probably have his Medical Association Gymkhana Pass revoked if he declared me medically fit, called me to say that my blood cholesterol was on the higher side. I told him to check with his nurse, since all my blood had been suctioned out by her anyway, but Uday insisted I needed a change in my food habits.
Uday also sent me an informative animation CD for the layperson, explaining what bad blood is. Cholesterol looks like a little Spongebob-shaped guy with bushbaby eyes, running around in a small tunnel, which represents your blood vessel going to your heart, which is a little smiley face in the background. Sometimes Spongebob gets stuck between boulders which appear in the tunnel, and this causes him to become blue in the face, and your blood vessel starts to look like Mumbai Central Station at rush hour. When a whole lot of cholesterols get stuck, your heart gets a sad face, and a doctor with a face mask (to hide his identity) comes in with a Bob-the-Builder mechanical shovel.
To prevent this from happening you have to be conscious about foods which you can or cannot eat, they are :
BAD FOOD GROUPS: Meat, milk, cheese, butter, desserts, fried foods, pizza, foods cooked by grandma, snacks, breakfast, lunch, dinner, munchies, beer, birthday, wedding and Christmas cakes.
GOOD FOOD GROUPS: Low fat grass, non-aerated water, rice husk and wood shavings.
Following this diet has been really, really hard for me. The worst part has been giving up steak. I love steak. I’m the kind of person who can gnaw through a whole chunk of tenderloin the size of Adnan Sami. But methinx today, thanks to all that sacrifice, I have developed blood again and that my cholesterol is a lot lower. Uday asked me to come back and have it checked, but his nurse will never take me alive.
On turning 55 ?? – oh! I decided I would keep it quiet, don’t want that pretty thing next door, hugging me and saying,” Happy Birthday UNCLEJI !”
