Of Anant Ambani, me and weight loss

Raju Korti
If you believe that successful weight loss needs more of programming than will power, here is my repartee. There is a huge emotional quotient attached to it as well.
The immediate provocation for this argument is a talking point story according to which Anant Ambani, the young son of industrialist Mukesh Ambani, shed a whopping 108 kilos in just eighteen months. Anant has been a regular sight during the IPL matches, especially those involving Mumbai Indians. He would be seen occupying a broad sofa all by himself and each time the camera panned on him, I have seen people sigh in disbelief how anyone could bloat to that extent. But fact is stranger than fiction. Ask me whose weight loss has been noticed by just a few compared to the national headlines that Anant made.
Many people believe that Ambani's weight loss story is merely promotional and an example of "money speaks". That may be true given the super-rich glossy status of the family. However, you got to give it to the boy who went through a rigorous diet regimen and a gruelling work-out schedule to shed the accumulated flab. That certainly needs a sustained effort and control when you know the boy lives in the era of junk food and doting parents would do everything to keep him happy.
Excess exercise is known to be counterbalanced by excess hunger, exemplified by what is called as "working up an appetite." Only a very few can resist such hunger pangs but for the vast majority, weight loss through exercise is a flawed option.
Anant lost six kilos per month if my arithmetic serves me right. I roughly lost the same weight in a span of three to four days. And though we are different case studies, we throw up same results.
In Anant's case, all credit to him and his weight loss advisers. I didn't have any. Nature ordained it for me. After the debilitating bypass heart surgery, I had several other complications that necessitated hospitalisation three more times. In the first instance I dropped 18 kilos since I had stopped eating and drinking (water please!) completely and being a diabetic, the only thing I remember during that period is alarmed doctors telling my relatives to stuff me with Fruity and rasagullas as my sugar levels had dipped to a dangerous below 50.
Three days of continuous monitoring showed that I had dropped to 52 kilos from 70 kilos which was a terrible fall and certainly nothing to be admired. So bad it was that I couldn't stand on my feet. Circumstances had cut me to size.
There are two factors that tempted me to make a comparison between Anant and me. The amount of weight loss in both cases was phenomenal and almost in as much time. Although he went through an excruciating schedule and I through the knife, the emotional quotient that I talked about is same. It is peripheral to this comparison that he hit national headlines and became a figure of admiration while your's truly could only garner the sympathy of relatives and friends. These are wages of social dynamics.
I have thrown weight around, now I don't have any. The powerful Ambani son can still do it after shedding those heavy-duty calories. There is just no comparison here.

Burnt alive in funeral rights

Raju Korti

Pic only for representation

An idle mind provokes more thinking, howsoever inconsequential it may be. In my present frail health, all I can do is to harness it to more constructive purpose.
The one thing that always gets to me is the emotion and melodrama after a murder or a suicide in serials and films. It appears that a funeral shot is mandatory in such episodes. The formula always works because nothing tugs at your heart-strings more than a funeral where mourners weep inconsolably while someone among the family of the bereaved lights the pyre. While you do make a concession for such emotional scenes as part of the "entertainment", it is amazing to see the quantity of wood burnt to show these fake funerals.
As a kid watching movies, it never occurred to my juvenile mind to think about such things. While watching a funeral shot all I could muster was few genuine drops of tears. Nothing affects as much as death does. Decades later, I still get misty-eyed watching those emotion-filled scenes but there is enough sense left now to question the necessity of wasting precious resource as wood on such scenes at a time when the environment is headed for an inevitable, impending disaster.
Crime serials in particular on television and movies in general have to have such a scene though each one of us concedes in our rational mood that they are corny and the effect is intended to last only until the time you watch them.
Forest covers are dwindling faster than people are planting trees. Oxygen will be available only in cylinders some day and the room temperature in a decade from now on will shoot through its rooftop. People who worry about environmental degradation are in terrible minority and their voices of sanity are either lost or go unheeded. Forget animals, even human race will become extinct one day if you make a small allowance for the extremity I am painting.
I am inclined to believe that given the badge of intellect they wear on their sleeves, our film-makers and serial-makers would do well to show funeral scenes symbolically rather than burning logs of wood every time to give the impression of being realistic. But discretion often gets shrouded in noisy debates and there will always be lobbies to and for. Ask know-alls of the likes of Arnab Goswamis and Rajdeep Sardesais. They have the potential to hold incendiary debates which are meritoriously inconclusive. Should there be a debate on this, a mild-mannered Sunder Lal Bahuguna would probably be run down by the shouting brigade from the showbiz.
I am looking to that day when some journalist will do an investigative story on this pepped up with facts and figures. My gut feeling is it will be a revelation.
Despite all this harangue, I am keen to witness a funeral scene being shot. I am sure the man who is shown as dead, must be watching his own funeral from the sidelines and laughing his guts out even as tonnes of wood burns.