Diabetes patients face two problems: diet and exercise. It’s hard to say which one is bigger. I’m diabetic myself, so I had to consider this question. It came as a complete surprise to me. For years, I used to drink large quantities of Old Monk every night, but realising that this was a bad thing, I used to counteract it by drinking large quantities of glucose every morning. It was very refreshing, and helped with the hangover. I liked it nice and cloudy, and often added extra spoonfuls for more flavour. After several years of maintaining this balance in my consumption of liquids, suddenly I was told I had diabetes. It seemed very unfair. My initial response was panic. I did lots of research. The good thing about the Internet is, we don’t need doctors any more. We can find everything out ourselves. The more I researched, the more I panicked. My feet would fall off! I was going to go blind! Every single one of my organs was going to fail one by one! I realised that I had to do something.
The choice was between diet and exercise. I had tried exercise once. It did not suit me. That left me with dieting as an option. It was karma. I had spent all my life mocking those who dieted. It was clearly an upper-class fad. I came from a family where food was valued, and very few of us were thin. The ones who were thin usually had digestive disorders, which required them to have large quantities of Gelusil and katla fish. As a result of this, I was mean to dieters, and made fun of them. Anticipating current trends, I decided that dieting was un-Indian. The evidence supports me. None of our shastras ever mention it. The Rig Veda is silent on weight loss, as are the Upanishads . In The Mahabharata , no one eats salad. On the other hand, ghee is mentioned frequently. I used to enjoy torturing these Westernised faddists. Now I was one of them.
I had to begin somewhere. I decided to start with breakfast. First, I replaced butter with butter substitute. It’s impossible to have too much of it, because it tastes like glue. This took all the fun out of toast, so I stopped having toast. I couldn’t eat eggs without toast, so I dropped the eggs. I used to supplement breakfast with the occasional fried item, such as a samosa , or leftover French fries, but my wife made sure I was deprived of them. Eventually, I descended to oats and papaya. After a few years of this, I am thinner, which means I am no longer in danger. Accordingly, I have started having omelettes again. Once in a while I add some bacon. The other day, I sneaked in a samosa . I’m no longer afraid of my feet falling off, and I have stopped poking my liver. I have conquered the fear. That’s all you need to do to defeat diabetes. Conquer the fear.
In Shovon Chowdhury’s most recent novel, Murder With Bengali Characteristics , Governor Wen lives in fear of someone snitching to the politburo
