The Fat's in the fire.

There are times I feel that I am pushing hard in an sisyphean uphill struggle without moving forward an inch. Each succeeding step is an almighty effort & surviving the ordeal itself represents progress. It's probably unfair to complain though since treadmills are supposed to work that way.

One among many sick cosmic jokes is that not too long ago I used to eat 2-3 times as much & used to weigh about 2/3rd of what I do now. I can only surmise that all that I ate then took the guerrilla option of hiding out till a day the most damage could be inflicted on my system & evidently the decision has been reached that the time is now. Every day I grow as a person - unfortunately most of it is sideways. The mirror does not lie but I wish it would be a tad more diplomatic & it's hard to escape the conclusion that it's time for some downsizing. Its apparent that the only way left is up - all the way to the society gym on the 8th floor.

My affair with regular exercise is now just over a year old & it's seen more ups than down. This is a matter of some slight concern as the objective was for the reverse to be true as far as my weight was concerned. Three days a week a trainer coaxes & cajoles me through a series of muscle wrenching contortions involving lifting, pushing & pulling weights of various shapes & sizes attached to machines, bars & all by themselves. Despite the obviously enervating nature of the effort this is ironically called "Strength training". The theory being that this builds muscle which in turn does away with fat. I am inclined to believe that the muscle building part of this is working as evidenced by the aches & pains I feel in muscles that I clearly did not posses before. As far as I can see the fat seems to have found a way to peacefully co-exist with the muscle though. This may mean that I need to rejig my thrice weekly leisurely stroll around the area while taking in the early morning sights or what I call "Cardio". I have tried this on the treadmill but somehow I seem to prefer the scenery moving when I do.

In the end though what seems to be most difficult to do & yet the most effective is controlling the food intake. Over time I have wound my way through many of the fad diets of the day General Motors, Modified Atkins, South Beach & the like & most seem to work for me. This is obviously a tragedy for someone who loves to eat out as much as I do. Things have come to such a pass that I dread the moment when I will see an item in the menu & my brain will supply the amount of exercise I will need to do to work that off (a single 50 gm samosa = approx. 120 cals = 15 mins on the treadmill).

The options, thus, are either eat less or exercise more. In either case the outlook is bleak. Obviously the fat's in the fire but it's not burning.

The Cup that Cheers.

One battle in our marriage was conceded by me even before the hostilities were opened. Growing up in Gujarat I had become used to drinking tea. Those that have tasted the concoction identified as such in the not so wild west will testify to the uniqueness of that brew. The process of it's creation lends itself easily enough to serving as a metaphor for the birth of life itself. Witness the primordial stew with all the constituent elements bubbling away for an eternity in a roiling, steaming, noisome brew & the almost miraculous end result.

These long years of being a "Tea"totaller came to naught though once we got married. Priya's TamBrahm conditioning brought with it an aromatic assault by Filter Kaapi that swept all before it & I became a Coffee drinker before I knew it. The toughest part of this lifestyle change is of-course finding the appropriate coffee. We have ranged far & wide in search of the right place to buy our coffee from including places as far afield as Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kerala & perhaps most exotic of all Cafe Coffee Day. That being accomplished the rest of the process is simple enough as long as the right instruments like the filter, miniature french press & the like are available. Things have now reached such a pass that I cannot fully awaken until that first cup of coffee homes into my insides.

I wanted to talk about a little ritual involving the drink that has come to mean a lot to me. Every day about an hour or so after my first cup I ask Priya to make a cup of coffee for me. Every day I have a different excuse - the first cup was too weak, or too milky, or too strong or failing that Pleeeeease .. She sets about making it & hands it to me & I proceed to consume it, usually in silence while watching Smriti leave for school or Ani shrugging himself into wakefulness. It's been a while since I started doing this & honestly the coffee is now somewhat incidental to the occasion - this is all about the interaction. Through all that both of us are busy with over the day there aren't too many opportunities for us to do anything specifically for each other. This one thing is my own little attempt to include something in her daily schedule that is just for me. I try to reciprocate by doing small things for her unasked but through a combination of her greater self sufficiency & my own relative ineptitude there are not that many things that I can do to tip the scales back.

So here's to Filter Kaapi. For me that second cup of the day is the cup that sets the day up for me - the cup that cheers !

Knock Knock, Ring Ring.

Of late like an aging fisherman my thoughts have been turning to the ones that got away. Opportunity comes to most of us & I guess what defines us is our response.

I was a solid but unspectacular football player on the fringes of a very good class team. I remember an epic clash in a semifinal of the school tournament where the winner was overwhelmingly tipped to become the champ. As a defender I was assigned to man-mark one of the opposition stars & spent the game harrying him from end to end (get between him & the ball or between the ball & the goal). Suddenly I found myself at the end of a loose ball with their goal in sight & my brain froze. "I am not a star & no way I should be the one scoring" - I made a feeble pass to one of our forwards in a much worse position than I was & long story short we ended up losing the game on penalties. Some opportunities are like that - we don't grab them because we may not believe that we deserve that chance.

Forward a few years - I was accosting unsuspecting foreigners at a well known Handicrafts emporium in Bangalore for a tourism related summer project when I met an opportunity in disguise. A guy walked out with hands full of bags - I introduced myself as an MBA student on a survey mission & offered to help him with his bags as long as he answered my survey. He agreed & we talked on the way to his car. He then asked me about my background & interests & we talked for a fair while. I learnt that he was looking to start a chain of country clubs in India & wholly unexpectedly he then asked me if I would like to join him as one of his first people in India ? I did what I thought was the smart thing & rebuffed him saying that I had to complete my MBA & was not ready to start working yet. A few months later I saw a piece in a business magazine identifying him as the scion of a Hong Kong tycoon & talking of his grand plans for India. Clearly recognizing an opportunity for what it is calls for skill that I perhaps lacked at the time !

Around the time I completed my MBA in the early days of the internet I was among a couple of people from the class offered a chance to get on board a very small company that had visions of making it very big. At the time I had just snared one of the higher paying jobs on campus & this offer of a significantly smaller salary boosted by the promise of "ownership" did not seem to measure up. I was just starting out in life & had visions of my own - all of them with Re spends associated with them & I convinced myself that what I needed was cash in hand then & not at some indeterminate time in the future. Needless to say that company went on to become the definitive success story among Indian internet based businesses & I sometimes do wonder "what if ?". This is not necessarily regret - I accept that there are times when one is just unable to make that leap of faith !

I am hoping that instances like these have taught me to recognize opportunity when it knocks (or rings) & to open up. Oh wait, looks like someone's at the door...

Life's a beach (or maybe a hill station).

It's that time of the year again ! The time to look ahead with good intentions & high expectations - Holiday Season Planning season. Unfortunately it's also often the time those expectations run afoul of practical considerations like availability of leave, funds etc. & half-hearted compromises have to be grudgingly accepted with face saving rationalizations tied to those acceptances.

My sincere advice to all is to rush through your holidays before you have kids & definitely before you have a second kid. Don't get me wrong - we love travelling with our kids & enjoy every minute (well almost every minute) but paying for only 2 tickets is twice as good as having to pay for 4 tickets ! We have painted ourselves into a bit of a corner anyway by not traveling by train when the kids were younger - Ani's first train ride was the TGV between Paris & Nice when he was 5 years old. Now we are somewhat afraid of offending their delicate sensibilities with the sights & sounds of a train journey so costly flights seem like the only option when we have to go someplace. Obviously this does not help the budget.

As someone who has traveled a bit it amazes me that for the rate one would pay for a good hotel room in India one could get 2 rooms in a similar hotel in many countries. Admittedly the service here is much better - for instance a welcome drink here is a uniformed guy with a frosted glass on a tray bearing a freshly plucked orchid & one in the US is a dismissive wave towards the vending machine in the lobby. The swings & roundabouts of holiday budgeting mean that the cheaper flights take you to more expensive places & vice versa.

The other big Q is where to go ? My bucket list is already big enough for a bathtub & if I add Priya's then we probably need a swimming pool. Obviously one more issue taking the kids along throws up is that they have to be entertained. As a case in point our Paris trip included only 4 hours at the Louvre but 2 days at Euro Disney. This does narrow the options a bit.

All things considered we now tend to look for trips where we can save on the travel, either drive or use miles, but be prepared to spend on the hotel - ideally a nice resort with a kids activity center, a pool & most importantly a good buffet. To round things off throw in a beach (or maybe a hill station).