Doing the waddle well

It’s been that kind of week. After doing ferocious and valiant battle with a virus that took on various forms, from a mere cold to influenza to whatever makes you breathe heavily as you walk up stairs and clutch your chest because you know that you will probably die when you get to wherever you are going before you actually get down to doing whatever you went there for but you won’t, since you have too much to do before, when and after you get there…I think I just lost track of that wonderfully wild sentence, by the way, so let’s abandon it and continue on our normally chaotic course…

Anyway, hot on the heels of the virus came the festival. Which meant that though I could spend a whole two-days of a weekend at home, I worked on the day that was actually the occasion as per the calendar as per the religious tenets that the family follows. And it was not just working, but working later than usual, which left me, Father and the driver in a very bad mood indeed, compounded by the assorted felonies of not being satisfied with the work I had done and wanting to eat junk food that I normally do not indulge in for various reasons that shall remain my own. But the festival of lights had nothing to do with light – normally spelled ‘lite’ by clever marketing folk – as describing the feeling we all collectively and individually experienced at the end of it all.

The festival was the classic celebration of good over evil or, as with all Indian celebrations, the victory of the calorie over counsel. Even as I ordered goodies to take to my team at work from the chappie who was said to be the best in the business, I knew that it would be the season of a certain degree of indulgence over the norm. And it was, surprisingly, not really. I do not waddle – albeit gracefully – down the corridor of the office while navigating my normal hectic workaday route; at least, not yet. But some people do…or perhaps they always did, it’s just that it is rather more noticeable now than before, maybe because everyone is so darn self-conscious about having eaten too much, too well, too blatantly.

The festival was also about giving. I gave away sweets by the kilo. I was given sweets by the kilo. And somewhere along the way, a lot more chocolate than we see on an average day made its home in our fridge, leaving very little space for the stuff that is our daily diet – greens, fruit, fibre! I began to dread each time the courier boy arrived at my desk bearing a package and a broad smile – most of it was junk mail related (or not) to work, mercifully. And I started feeling that the heavy breathing was not my bronchioles getting a trifle clouded, but the mithai that had been perforce stuffed into my mouth by well-meaning and cheerily celebrating friends.

This is the time of year that you perfect the sidle. As someone bears down upon you, one arm ominously outstretched, the hand at the end of it holding something that makes the fingers glisten greasily, you need to do a quick sidestep and either grab the mithai before it is shoved into you, or avoid the friend completely, hoping that he or she will understand why you suddenly have developed an aversion to the person that you shared so many gossip sessions and giggles with. There will be times when you find that same piece of sweetmeat that you worked so hard to avoid waiting for you on your desk, but the perils of that too can be averted with retrograde amnesia – you carefully give the mithai away, leave it there for the office pests (anything from cockroaches or your neighbour at the next table) to carry off or drop it (oops!) on the floor where it will be gradually ground into the anonymously coloured carpet to be discovered as fossil fragments during some future excavation.

All that apart, Diwali has come and gone. Now it is time to clean out the debris - physical, emotional and edible – and get life and self back into shape. Meanwhile, a very happy albeit belated Diwali to all!