Weight-losing, fitness-gaining, & XBox meals
Winter is gone, and gone with it is sharpened appetite, excuses for heavy meat dishes, for sarso da saag and makki di roti, nolen gur sandesh (norom paak), and nolen gur mishti doi, and for those lovely kachoris made by the snack shop across the road, where they manage to plaster the inside of what are basically puris with a paste of green pea (motorshutir kochuri, for those pedants who want the correct Bonglatinate name).
Guests leave town, like birds ruthlessly flying off to nicer climes, and they take with them restaurant visits and festival buffets — practically everything, except for the tablecloth.
After their departure everything goes well for a few days. Mornings become about self-denial and virtue-signalling to yourself in the bathroom mirror: no food or coffee for the first few hours after waking up. Instead, green tea one day, spring flush the next, and junket-scored Darjeeling the third. No milk or sugar, obviously. And breakfast pushed to 11-11.30 am.
The first sugar kick comes with coffee around noon. Dinner is taken absurdly early, even at 7.30 pm on some days, the idea being to banish all calories — or, at least, all non-alcoholic calories — till brunch the next day, forcing all cells of the body to break out into tiny, tiny brawls and eat each other. Or, actually all the unhealthy fatty ones — a bit like rich people car-jacking other rich people's full-tanked SUVs once the petrol supply is switched off.
After a week, I've lost half a kilo, er… 500 gm. After eight days, a coordinated ambush
