Affection is often synonymous with calorie laden food in Indian culture. In a country where a sizable portion of the population is undernourished, the chubby kids of seemingly opulent households are forcibly over-fed to bear testimony to the "khaata-peeta" nature of the family. Obesity and health-issues are of course secondary issues and mostly dont even feature on the list of priorities.
There have been multiple instances when well-meaning relatives have forced me to stuff myself with fried and sugary fare till my seams stretched to the limit. And I don't even bear a distant resemblance to someone who needs any more food!
Some hosts find it difficult (or rather impossible) to sit and chat with a guest without asking "What will you have now?" every couple of minutes. Little do they realize that there is only so much that an average homo sapien can ingest without upsetting the digestive system. Even if you politely decline (at the risk of offending the host), you are bombarded with irksome questions like "Are you on a diet?", "You don't look like you need to lose weight?", "Why is your diet so scanty?", "Did you not like it?", "Should I get you something else?" and so forth.
Although I fight hard to resist the temptation of blatantly telling them that this is by no means the first and the last time I'm having a meal and that if I eat any more, I'm going to throw up on their Italian sofa; I usually have to make do with a "No, thank you very much"- a phrase that apparently holds no meaning with kitchen-happy aunties.
Why does love have to clog arteries, induce heartburn, make you fart like there is no tomorrow and leave you feeling sick for the next one week? Why can people not hand out a customary glass of beverage with some cookies and chill? Does "spending quality time" and "catching up" have to translate into "binging" and "over-feeding"?
If you have a smart way of dealing with this particular brand of agony, I would be glad to hear from you.
The next time you go to "kitchen happy aunties" you could carry a sign or wear a t-shirt that screams, I'm starving for non fried stuffs, fresh fruits anyone??
ReplyDeleteAnother ingenuous way is to keep rubbing you stomach and blurt out how stuffed you are and how you wised you had not eaten that or this.
Indians(middle class) have to make a radical change on how they eat because in 20 years we would have 50% of our work force suffering from lifestyle diseases. Bring physical activity back to life.