March 6, 2003

Life in a fat man’s world isn’t all that bad, writes Fouad M. Khan

The tyre around your belly appalls you yet the tikka, and the boti calls you. Karahi is a luring mistress in her green chili jewels and korma is irresistible with its sweet cinnamon smell. The carbon-meat aroma of barbecue sparks in your heart the most instinctive of all libidos, and roast lamb legs are more enticing than tanned Anna Kournikova’s legs. To eat, or not to eat, that is the question.

Ok, I admit, the last little metaphor in the above passage is a bit of a stretch but you get the idea. It’s that time of the year again, when all New Year resolutions to lose this many pounds in that much time are blown away in barbecue smoke. When the fat on the body gets to be even fatter, and all the gastronomic pleasures conspire to rid your life of all other more long-term pleasures.

This year round, thanks to a rare combination of events that is not expected to occur again before 2932, the emotional dilemma was graver for us; the unfortunate amongst the human race. Define us? We are everywhere and nowhere because you see us and we don’t leave any imprints on your memory; we don’t have any identity, any speciality, any uniqueness, any individuality. We are the ordinary, the plain, the common.

Physically, we are on the other side of the line that separates fit and fat, mentally we lie on the tropic of mediocrity if not a little below. Our social skills are a little better than Scrooge’s, and the burden of an overpowering inferiority complex leaves our spinal columns reminiscent of the hunchback of Notre Dame. What makes us most unfortunate of all unfortunates is the fact that our perils are never recorded, our efforts through the mundane are never appreciated and our heroics just to live life, aren’t made into epics.

We are never the cynosure of any stories, told in any medium. We don’t have any art, culture or literature because artists aren’t ordinary and they express only of their own kind. Unlike the poor, the illiterate or the unprivileged, we are held responsible for our grievances because we didn’t stand up for ourselves. Nobody writes articles about us, nobody researches into our story, nobody interviews us and takes our photographs and puts them in newspapers.

Our festivals and occasions are a little different from what’s used in the corporate world as advertising props. Let’s start with “Bakra” Eid for instance. My “Bakra” Eids are a continuous struggle against that fatter man; the one Kingsley Amis wrote about. “Outside every fat man there [is] an even fatter man trying to close in.” This time around, just as always, I lost. But secretly, very deep inside, I wasn’t all that disappointed. Why should I be? Was Faust disappointed, heartbroken or regretful in the end?

You see, at thousands of dinner tables every night, hundreds of thousands of fat men cut what essentially are millions of Faustian deals. The options available to them are, short term ecstasy vs long term satisfaction. They chose what only true heroes dare to opt for. Fat men really are, the only “men” left in the world today. Others are enticed by corporate created images of perfect form.

They suppress their desires and tame their hearts, they incur pain upon themselves in gyms, crying and pumping iron and crying, punishing themselves to look good, to conform to arbitrary standards of perfection set by the society. They are nothing but mincemeat in the great grinder of corporate machinery that our world has now become. Fat men are the iconoclasts of our age. They are the last of the great resistance. So you combine that knowledge with the pleasures of eating and you can at least build an unreal halo of happiness around yourself till the festival lasts. However, things get more complicated as they start piling up.

Eid isn’t over yet and in comes Basant. Now Basant is an occasion for the young, the rich and the beautiful. For as far as I can see, the only thing really exciting about the whole makeup of this festival is inter-sex mingling. You know, young guys and girls with attractive figures and rosy cheeks, with enough money and time to kill on their hands, gathering on roof-tops or in party places to enjoy each other’s presence; that’s Basant for you. Now I have absolutely no problems with any of this except that Basant isn’t quite the same if you are invisible. Imagine yourself strolling in a golf club amongst the merry faces of the fortunate, staring at some with desperation and looking at others with awe, while nobody even notices you. Sounds like fun, right?

Now you survive this, and the world cup is waiting to embrace you. Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with cricket. Meaning, I love the game to the extent that I believe it was one of the reasons why Britons had an empire, and I so suck at it that sometimes I hate to even watch it. Yes, I have played a lot of cricket and if I’d had even a whiff of any talent in me, I probably would’ve made it professional. So far, the game hasn’t given me anything back, it isn’t a sport that makes you any fitter; Ranatunga was a top class player with a well-rounded belly and there’ve been a few more.

What I have spent for the love of the game is beyond evaluation; money, I won’t count but time is priceless and boy, is cricket demanding in that respect. So whenever something like the world cup is about to get underway, I promise myself to stay away from cricket and television. But as so many people in this country know, these resolutions never live out their natural life span. They die a sacrificial death at the altar of love; love of the greatest game there is. Some other things that are massacred include time, career, relationships and pretty much all other stuff that’s important.

Valentine’s day is also harped on about in the modern media, so much so that you hardly have a choice to look away. Why is it not realized that we also exist as a silent majority; women and men with no boy/girlfriend? This article might seem tacky to you but to us, all the lovey-dovey advertisements, programming and greeting cards are in extremely bad taste and stupid. So what do you do on the night of February the 14th, all alone in your apartment, miserable, pathetic and p****d off with the rest of the world? You sift through your video library and out pops the Lawrence of Arabia; the ultimate movie for loners, no heroines, no heroes, just the story of one man’s love affair with the desert and himself.

A friend calls, someone with a penchant for old classics, for wearing 38-inch waists rather than the more apt 42 and given to flatulence. You call him over, turn on the TV and heat up the microwave; it’s movie time. Not quite the romantic scenario one can hope for but trust me, as the bihari boti melts in your mouth, soda sizzles down your throat and Peter O’ Toole strolls across the magnificent desert vistas, you realize life isn’t that bad after all.

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