Whichever part of the world you go to, the wellness flyers follow — promising a good life.
As I was reading the Sunday newspaper in New Delhi the other day, a colourful brochure fell out from between the pages that asked, “Do you want to live a healthy, active lifestyle?”
It then said that I should not let the poor environment, lifestyle and health ruin my life anymore. “We can provide the solution,” it claimed.
New Delhi, like Beijing, is blanketed by smog and pollution and if unfortunately you have various allergies, life can be quite miserable, so I got interested about this wellness method.
There is no need to diet, take any medication or even give up your favourite food, it said.
It offered a free check-up as a start to the treatment, but the only problem was that its Central Market branch was bang opposite a KFC outlet. Indians have begun to love American fast food (except for beef burgers, that have been turned into ‘veggie’ burgers for local tastes and palate) and have readily joined the obese and diabetic club the Americans have started worldwide.
I checked the other branch of the wellness place and it was in Rajinder Nagar, about 40 minutes from where I was.
But ironically, this wellness place was near Bikaner Sweets, a “sweetmeat” shop.
For those of you who have never tasted Indian sweets, one bite into the cloying, syrupy milk sweet and your back teeth start to tingle and you get shivers down your spine as the dessert goes down your gullet.
(If you are the type of person who thinks baklava, or a date, is sweet, then try the gulab jamun (cottage cheese balls soaked in a sugar syrup), which is quite a foodie adventure.
Cool shades
The flyer had contact numbers of two lifestyle consultants and a tag line at the bottom that asked, “Your health is our concern ... is it yours?”
On the other side were “Before” and “After” pictures of someone named Monica. She looked pear-shaped in the ‘Before’ picture, and in the ‘After’, she stood with a hand on her hip — in a pose reminiscent of Bollywood actresses who can break out into a song and run around trees at the drop of a hat.
She wore cool shades and seemed to have gone to the beauty salon as she had great-looking, shiny hair.
Good for Monica, I told myself. She did not have to opt for plastic surgery and change her face completely like Hollywood actress Renee Zellweger, who obviously was terrified that she was past her prime and would not get any new roles in this very ageist world.
Ageing is something that we all can relate to and food plays a large part in that process of growing old, as it depends on how much you eat and what you eat. On page four of the newspaper was a story of the famous Rohtak sisters who beat up with a belt three guys who had sexually harassed them on a bus and a video of them in action had gone viral online.
They turned infamous as they were found to be regularly beating up guys who purportedly were “eve-teasers” and seemed to have someone handy to take a video.
On the same page was a headline, “Stars and Stripes sans spice”. (For some reason, Indian newspapers use a lot of French words, but that’s another story).
The report was about US President Barack Obama’s impending visit to India for the Republic Day celebrations and how the luncheon is being carefully planned not to include spices because of his heartburn issues. The whole story was descriptive when it came to his very tough condition called acid reflux. Maybe Obama should look up the consultants who treated Monica and also change his lifestyle, so next time he may be able to enjoy chilli chicken.
Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@mahmood_saberi
