SMORGASBORD: All the options in the world but not a thing to eat

Many, many (don’t ask how many) years ago, the only boy in the world acted like I was invisible. I knew the reason — I was the wrong shape — so I hit speedily on the right manoeuvres to make. I would starve myself into his line of vision, I resolved, he would (naturally) love me back, and we’d embark upon a lifetime together in which all I’d do would be sit around and look skinny.

So, in a kind of longish dietary daydream, I went on to forgo all meals in the day but one. Foolishly, even for those times, that was tea, when I waded into the buttered bread the college refectory provided like a woman deranged. Which of course I was. As it turned out at the end of a couple of months, I acquired, in addition to a waistline, an ulcer so vast that I rather lost interest in its original inspirer, good-looking though he was.

In later years (I said, don’t ask!) my urge to slim again was less activated by the desire to do the other fellow good. I was looking out for only me. A doctor friend, observing me negotiating a flight of stairs, launched into an unkind if funny imitation of what that did to me. At the conclusion of that one-man skit, he followed it up with a recital of the dangers to the heart that lurk in the lifestyle of the overweight.

This time I went professional. At the clinic of one of Delhi’s best-known dieticians, I humbly sought her advice. The doctor was charming, persuasive and a splendid advertisement of her prescribed cure, with the figure of a Tanagra statuette. When she outlined my future eating pattern (I was required to go back to be weighed and monitored every couple of days) I fell for the entire bag of tricks. What helped was that I was assured I could eat my head off.

Which I did. Steak, fried chilla, dhokla, even a pork chop took on the magic of my guiding manitou to weight-dropping success. The only thing I couldn’t have: carbs. So what, I thought. Who wants starch? But a week into the diet, I was ready to sell my soul for a potato.

And then, whatever good there was going for my heart, there was the matter of my blood pressure. Alerted by a constant feeling of tension at the base of my neck, I consulted my doctor ‘friend’ (ha!) and discovered I had an early case of hypertension. Goodbye Tanagra.

But it didn’t end there. Friends wouldn’t let it. Alarmed by my burgeoning silhouette, one presented me with a membership in Weight Watchers. It was guaranteed to do the job, she assured me. Back in the UK, where she regularly attended their sessions, anyone who hadn’t lost the desired number of ounces since the last one was presented with a giant pink pig — a sure and humiliating deterrent to any self-respecting trencherwoman. With the form she sent me was a tiny pair of weighing scales. Not for me, silly, but for the items of food I would henceforth have to measure before I ate them. They frightened me and I threw them away very fast.

It’s not that I’m genetically inclined to be fat or opposed to diets. My sister is slim most of the time (blast her) but diets all the time. The big thing in her life is General Motors, whose prescribed meals are a pattern she follows without fail for 10 days every month. She swells and deflates like an accordion accordingly, and it is a pleasure to catch her between sessions.

No, I cannot believe we have much to win in this wasteful war on eating. And I also refuse to stop talking about my next meal. What they’re trying to is make food the next F-word. (Will all those glossy pictures of restaurant specials become the new pornography?) We have to arrest this pernicious movement before it runs over us. Or one day, we’ll all be dining, politely, and in full evening wear, off capsules. And a very bad-tempered lot we’ll be, too. Human beings have been endowed a palate, a tongue and a nose each to identify what should be a decent mouthful, and teeth to deal with it. Diets shouldn’t come between them because they bring with them a sense of deprivation. To cut no slack for human weakness is to be both daft and unscientific.

No wonder diets don’t work. (If they did, there wouldn’t be so many.) The next time you want to lose fat forever, don’t go eenie-meenie-minie-mo between the bewildering array to choose from — just pick elegantly at your food. You may just come up with a more permanent solution than you hoped: beyond this world .

As for me, I will hitch up my loose salwars, threatening as they are to burst with a bang, raise my paw to the skies and paraphrase that fictional heroine, “I’ll eat and I’ll eat and I’ll eat … and I’ll never go hungry again!” Scarlett ’Hara made a bad choice. She snacked on, above all things, a radish. I’m made of sterner stuff.

Pass the ghee, please.

Whom to believe?

• Early warning: (BC 1952 circa) “He who desires to augment his own flesh by eating the flesh of other creatures lives in misery” (Mahabharata). The first signs that vegetarianism had raised its carrot head.

• Liquid measure: (1087 AD): England’s William the Conqueror replaced food with alcohol because he was too fat to ride. History is silent on whether he actually lost weight. What we do know is that he managed to get on a horse again because he was astride one when he fell off it and died anyway.

• Calories don’t count: (1961) Herman Tuller, author of the bestselling diet book, espoused a high-fat, high-protein diet. Was later found guilty of mail fraud for selling worthless safflower capsules.

• Where’s the beef?: (1967) Dr Irwin Stillman promised a loss of 7-15 lbs a week to dieters who stuck to meat, poultry, eggs and cheese. His disciples discovered that excess protein without carbs triggers ketosis, resulting in everything from bad breath to constipation.

• When all else fails: (1999) Participants at diet guru Gwen Shamblin’s Weigh Down Workshop were encouraged to turn to God and the Bible to help them avoid eating.