You probably know the right meaning of WTF. For Rekha and me, it is “Where’s The Food?”…and that is the underlying problem of our house.
We talk about health, fitness and about weight.
We talk about sugar, cholesterol, protein, workout, badminton, core strength, ageing, discipline, and yet we eat like a college student who has just discovered unlimited Tamil Nadu meals.
And that’s why in our house, the weighing machine has a very important role. It is hidden under the bed in our master bedroom – the one in which Rekha sleeps with her AC at 18 degrees.
I don’t know if we put the weighing machine there, or it hides there by itself after ruining our day.
Rekha and I both watch our weight, but there is a difference.
Whenever I stand on the circle of shame (the shape of our weighing machine), I tell Rekha my weight. But she never tells me hers.
She says, “I have lost 400 grams in last one week,” but never gives away the absolute number.
This hurts more because when we got married in 2004, she was 49 Kgs.
And by a stretch, she was my 50 kg Taj Mahal…if you know Tamil and have heard the song ‘Fifty kg Taj-u Mahal enakae enaka’ from the 1998 movie Jeans starring Aishwarya Rai, you will know what I mean.
For those who don’t know Tamil the song’s lyrics means, ‘The 50 Kg Taj Mahal for me…”
Her current weight has been one of the great unsolved mysteries of our marriage.
I have known Rekha for more than twenty-five years. I know her moods, when she is angry, the moment she is going to say ‘fine!’ and when she is going to say ‘nothing.’ I know which sarees she likes, which handbags she likes, which shops she trusts, which of her friends she doesn’t trust, and which restaurants she thinks are overrated.
But I do not know her weight. Finding out Rekha’s actual weight is like finding out how much money the British took out of India. I have an estimated number, but if you asked me how I arrived at that number, I can’t explain.
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I don’t check my weight daily because I am not disciplined. I do so only on special occasions.
For example, if I have played badminton for a long time and sweated a lot, I will come back home with the confidence of a man who has burnt at least 7,000 calories, and stand on the weighing machine.
But the weighing machine is very disciplined. It disappoints me every time.
I go there thinking, “Today surely I must have lost at least 500 grams.”
But no, the machine will show me the same weight I had a few days back.
Sometimes, after a heavy workout, I stand on it… only to see the same number.
Then I will remove my watch, hoping against hope and yet it again it will be the same number.
They say air is weightless, but why take a chance. So I breathe out and then stand on the scale….but see the same number.
Then, like all desperate men, I suck in my stomach.
And since I haven’t come out of the master bedroom for five minutes, like all dutiful wife Rekha will walk in to check if everything is alright. She will see me sucking my stomach while standing on the scale and say, “I don’t think that helps.”
Of course it helps, because when I suck in my stomach I don’t have to crane my neck to see the numbers. But I won’t explain it all to her.
I will quickly get off the scale and slide it under the bed, because I don’t want my wife to see the number on the scale. I like telling my weight to her myself…because that helps me make morally justifiable adjustments.
Basically small adjustments that don’t harm her, but show me in better light in her eyes.
For example, if I have lost only 100 grams, I may end up saying “Rekha…lost 300 grams.”
She would smile, and say, “Rajan….that’s good. No?”
I will nod, and my life would start feeling fine all over again.
In 2016, when I gave up corporate life, and started my own business, I was 78 kilos.
Today, without any dieting, but with three days of heavy workout and three days of heavy badminton almost every week, I am usually between 70 and 71 kilos.
Effectively, I have lost 7 to 8 kilos over the years.
The problem is that I have never been able to go below 70. That number is like my Wagah border…I can go near it….look across it…but I can’t cross it. No matter what I do, the weighing machine stops me at 70.
It is as if Rekha has had a private conversation with the weighing scale: “Whatever happens, don’t let him become too happy.”
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The funny thing is, whenever I weigh myself, I tell Rekha. But if I ask her, “What is your weight?” She won’t reply. She will pretend as if she hasn’t heard it.
Worse still, she will bring up some task that’s still pending and ask for its status.
I have even tried indirect approaches.
“Rekha, as we grow older BMI is important. Shall we calculate ours?”
She didn’t fall for it.
Then one day, as I lay next to her, and she seemed vulnerable, I asked her, “After all these years, we don’t have any secrets between us…right?”
She didn’t even turn towards me…she continued to look at the ceiling fan and said, “Many.”
That one word was enough to freeze me in my place because marriage is not about knowing everything…it is about knowing when to stop asking.
If there are a few things Rekha is keeping a secret from me, then I sure as hell don’t want to know. She is doing that because I may get hurt if I know. That works for me too, which is why I don’t tell her about my girlfriends.
But however hard she may try to hide it, I know when she has had a bad day on the weighing scale.
The weighing machine may have given her the number, but it is me who faces the consequences.
Some days she will come out of the master bedroom and suddenly I will be responsible for everything wrong in the house.
“Why is this towel here?”
“Why are the lights on?”
“Why is this charger lying here?”
“Why are you sitting like you have lost something?”
I know the pattern so when something like this happens, I keep a low profile. I avoid talking, burping, and farting. On an average I breath about 14 to 16 times per minute, and on days when the weighing machine has shown her a number she is not happy with, I bring it down to 12 to 13 times so as to not disturb her.
But a husband can’t always be careful enough. In marriage, many disasters begin with the husband trying to help.
So one day when Rekha was not happy with the weighing machine, I told her that I had an idea.
She looked at me with suspicion. Because she has lived with me long enough to know that my ideas come in two categories: useless and dangerous.
I said, “Why don’t you lie down on the floor, lift both your legs up at 90 degrees to your body, and I will place the weighing scale on your feet?”
She stared at me. I continued, because men never know when to stop.
“That way the scale will show a lower number.”
Technically, I am not even sure whether this is true.
But Rekha did not reply. Neither did she laugh….which meant, it wasn’t funny as well.
That day I realised that women do not appreciate scientific innovation when they are upset with their weight.
After a few hours she asked, “Do you think I am overweight?”
Before I tell you what I responded with, you need to know that we Rajans are lovable creatures. For us, one only needs to be a woman to fall in love. Tall or short, fat or thin, fair or dark, rich or poor…doesn’t matter. All that we need is for you to be a woman.
Now, I can’t go back to Rekha with that reply, can I? So I said, “Of course not. And even if you were, that’s just more of you to love.”
There was silence from the other end. Now when your wife is silent, it augurs well for the husband to also remain silent.
Later that night Rekha asked, “Do you want to start dieting?”
I don’t remember what happened over the next half hour…I have faint memory of not wanting to diet…but I also remember saying, “Ok, let’s do it together!”
And the next day we skipped our regular tea and had green tea.
And we reduced the quantity of rice intake, and we stuck to a lot of greens. The whole day, looked at each other with respect.
The next day we went for the core workout, which we have been paying for the last one year, but skipping more times that attending.
During the first week of green tea, and core workouts, we would check weight often – as soon as we got up, after a bath when still in a towel, before going to bed, etc – but we didn’t notice anything.
I usually don’t care but Rekha takes dieting seriously and loves to see results.
After a week she sprung a surprise, “What is this Rajan…is it even worth it?”
I would have given up right then, but then I knew Rekha wanted to try this out, for the 100th time, once again. So didn’t give up.
“Yes Rekha…let’s keep at it for two weeks and then take a call,” I said and gave her hope.
So we continued to consume only green tea, and maintain the rest of the drama.
One day I came back home slightly early, and saw Rekha watching ‘Pritam and Pedro’ on Netflix. Right next to her was a Tupperware with her favourite snack – Madras Mixture.
The biggest enemy of weight loss in our house is not rice but Tupperware containers, which in our house are available in three sizes.
In these containers, we store dry fruits, different kinds of biscuits, snacks, mixtures, murukku, and many other items that are not technically meals but can quietly become one.
There are at least ten to twelve such containers in the house at any given time.
Which means that in our house, food is always available. This is where WTF becomes our family motto.
When Rekha sits in front of the TV, she will sometimes take two-three such containers. This is normal, and all of us do that.
But my problem is, when one of them gets over, and my daughter and I look for it, Rekha will refuse that she had anything to do with its disappearance.
“No, no. It was almost over when I took it from the kitchen shelf,” is her standard line and she doesn’t budge
Rhea and I don’t believe her. We have seen patterns repeating…just that we don’t have it documented.
Now we are wondering whether we should install CCTV in the hall, not for security, but to find out who is finishing the snacks.
I cannot make too much fun of Rekha and her love for snacks because I have my own weakness – peanuts. I am a huge fan of peanuts and have it at all occasions.
I love them because they come in many forms – salted peanuts, masala peanuts, fried peanuts, boiled peanuts…kind of like the rats in Pied Piper of Hamelin.
I can have peanuts with Old Monk, without Old Monk…I can have them when I am happy, when I am sad or when I am writing.
If there is one food item that has stood by me through good times and bad times, it is peanuts. Unfortunately, my body has not handled this relationship well because now I have high cholesterol.
When I was young, my mother used to say cholesterol is a rich man’s disease. This made sense then because only the rich ate butter, cheese, meat, sweets, cashews, and things we saw only on Doordarshan.
So if cholesterol is a rich man’s disease and I now have it, I can only conclude one thing – I am going to be rich soon.
And when that happens I plan to hire a weighing machine operator. His job will be like that of a lift operator…he will be be next to the weighing machine…and once you stand on it…he will speak out the number. But the best part is, he will also motivate us when we feel let down.
“Ma’am, it could be because of the weight of your jeans!”
“Sir, remember last night you had a drinks party…must be all that food.”
Just that, we may have to move the weighing machine to the living room…because I can’t have another man standing inside our master bedroom.
I believe a weighing machine doesn’t just weigh us…it also measures our hope….our confidence. Every time we stand on it, we are not just checking kilos but also seeing if yesterday’s sacrifice mattered.
And that’s why we need a “confidence booster” right next to the weighing machine. And my idea may work, because hope and confidence are just like weight – they keep returning.