By Devi

Ever heard of an optical illusion ? An optical illusion in plain English is when your eyes play tricks on you - you see things that are not actually there. It has been happening to me for years and I didn't realise it till it was almost too late. There I was happily adding kilos here and there till it was a kilo everywhere. My mirror is the biggest liar - whenever I looked I saw myself as I was ten years ago (if not earlier), slender if not sylph - like. In my more candid moments I did realise that I had put on weight but people hastened to tell me that as a mother and now as a grandmother to boot, I should look the part and not try to look like the baby's sister!

Friends and acquaintances are the most unreliable and are the worst culprits if one wants to get a true picture where ones weight is concerned. Imagine yourself at a big dinner party here in Vizag or for that matter anywhere else. As you enter the hostess greets you with, "Lost weight recently? I must say you look good". You fall neatly into the trap without realising that as a good hostess her job is to make you feel happy and moreover, she would like you to do justice to the food she has so meticulously prepared. Before you have time to give yourself a pat on the back, comes the comment from across the room, "Looking quite prosperous these days, aren't you?  To say the least, friends comments are most confusing. Half of them declare that you are looking trim while the other half recommend a visit to the Slim Gym !

It is at this juncture that I became aware that slimming is a big affair. Vizag and every other self respecting town has places which guarantee to help you shed those extra kilos. All magazines carry at least one article on dieting. All kinds of diets are advocated. Once you are on the weight conscious track you become familiar with terms like low calorie diet, workouts, lean body mass, muscle tone etc.

Being fat is no fun. The first to protest are your feet as the poor things were not designed to carry all that extra weight. The next is "high cholesterol". Not bad at all because it means you have reached the heights of sophistication. Fashions change even in diseases. The Romantic poets were so enamored of good old fashioned tuberculosis that they contrived to die of it. My own favourite TB victims were Keats and Emily Bronte.

I have forgotten the taste of coffee. These days I don't want to get up early -  that way I can at least postpone the drinking of my tepid lime juice without sugar by at least an hour. Dieting is such a sweet sorrow because though it is terrible right now, when it ends the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is a new slim you.