Through Thick and Thin

: Obesity, slimming-programs and other totally unrelated issues....

Obesity is the topic of hot discussion these days and thus no wonder the trend in fashion is ‘slimming-programs’- whether it be bollywood actresses taking to size zero figures or slimming down of the paychecks of the BPO sector. And yet in some places obesity seems to have got such an upperhand that slimming-programs do not seem to be working, like the very very obese price-tags of almost everything, from vegetables to automobile fuel. Every other day a not-at-all-obese man (read Manmohan Singh) promises us that steps are being taken to remedy this problem. But the very next day a very noisy group of immature people (read opposition MPs) accuse Mr. Sharad Pawar ,who happens to be quite obese both physically as well as financially, of not doing anything to reduce the prices of onions (Don't start wondering how the International Cricket Council President can reduce onion prices - he actually happenes to be our agricultural minister too). I must mention, by the way, that our country is unique where elections are often lost and won on the basis of price of onions. But there is a little piece of the jigsaw puzzle that does not fit into the picture. Mr Laloo Yadav and Mr Mulayam Singh (who is not really as gentle a man as his name suggests) are constantly complaining that they are unable to properly fill their stomachs due to high food prices, and yet I you can see they are just as obese as they were two years back, possibly even more. Then Mr Shashi Tahroor, a person who few years back had almost become the UN Secretary General , was found to have a ‘fat’ share in an IPL team and so was cut down to size (as a result of which he has a ‘slim’ chance getting back to top level politics).

Politics aside, there are many other areas where slimming-programs are being applied unnecessarily as well. Suddenly out of the blue, someone (or something) is thought to be obese, and is ‘slimmed’ down, like Kareena Kapoor, who without any rhyme or reason, felt it necessary to shed 20 kgs (unfortunately, a visiting team of nutritionists from the UNO thought that ours is a country so affected by poverty that even celebrities are victims of hunger and malnutrition). Then of course, there is the Indian Gen-X (and Gen-Y and Gen-Z and various other ‘new’ generations) who are hell bent on ‘slimming down’ their waistlines, as well as other aspects of their life. Even the age old English vocabulary hasn’t been spared. Various English words, which they think are too obese for them to digest, have been slimmed down to unimaginable extents. The culprits of course are telecom operators, Twitter, Facebook etc. who think it to be a crime if someone writes something more that 160 characters long. So, as de say- u cant alwys expct us 2 rit all words prperly. D wrds in eng lang r 2 long, n it wont fit in2 sms neways. (If you have understood what was written, then you too can begin cutting excess fat out of your words from now on). Then again talking about this magazine itself, I had expected this to be quite a fat issue with lots and lots of contributions but unfortunately due to dearth of articles, the magazine got slimmed down. I hope we manage to come out with a bit more ‘obese’ issue next time.

Oh! I totally forgot to write about the causes of obesity, the way it can be tackled and the steps to be taken to get your body back to shape. But unfortunately, if I write any further, this article itself would become too obese and the chances of the readers going through the whole of it would be very slim. And being the editor, I’d not like that to happen. So stay in shape, and say NO to obesity, till we come out with the next ‘slim’ issue of our Class Magazine.