A Recipe for Successful Weight Loss

Ingredients

Some street food such as Chole Kulcha or Chicken Momos
A lassi
A reduced intake of alcohol
Greatly increased intake of water
Reduced appetite
The start of a hot Delhi summer
Some exercise such as walking, swimming, yoga and running

For this recipe it is important to have first settled into your new surroundings and have a routine. Attend yoga three times per week at the temple across the road and revel in listening to the temple bells whilst contorting yourself into various assans or meditating. Combine this with walking to and from work. This is especially easy to do if you find it a hassle getting in autos. Add a smattering of swimming and running. Sweat.

For this recipe you will find it easier if your VSO placement is in an area where your choice of food is Western junk, greasy Indian takeaway or tasty and cheap street food. Keep forgetting to take in your own food so you resort to the street food. Bake at a Delhi summer temperature of 42 degrees (or gas mark 19). This level of heat is necessary to ensure the mix of street food becomes a lethal concoction of bad salad onions, infected meat and bad hygiene. You will find your tolerance to these foods won’t be as good as the locals even if you think being in country for 5 months will have sorted you out. Add these ingredients until you see the first few rounds of the so-called Delhi Belly.

Reduce your appetite drastically at this point. If the infection has persisted, reluctantly take some antibiotics until the weight loss really kicks in. The next stage of the recipe needs only a few ingredients. Add only dry toast, probiotic dahi (a.k.a. yoghurt) and peeled apples. Ensure you wash this down with 6 – 8 litres of water a day. Occasionally add a pinch of rehydration salts. At this point stop all exercise unless you can be sure you have enough energy and there are toilet facilities nearby.

Should you feel better, you can decide to add another infection from street food. At this point there is a real danger of dehydration or acute gastroenteritis. Ensure you stay in contact with a good doctor and you know where the nearest hospital is. Should you have a second infection, again stick to the above few ingredients for another week. Once you are better from a second course of antibiotics and you are back on normal foods, go to a notoriously dirty Indian town such as Varanasi for the weekend. Be careful whilst eating out in travellers’ cafes and clean Indian restaurants but then decide to drink a lassi on the last day.

Call the doctor on your return stating you really don’t want to take a third course of antibiotics but will if you must. If you’re not feeling well at this point you can add some humiliation by having to attend the doctors with a stool sample. Add the antibiotics depending on the results of the sample and continue with the usual diet of dahi and toast. Add the occasional egg if the recipe tastes bland.

Once the effects of Delhi belly decrease and appetite returns, keep meals small and resume levels of exercise. If the above steps are followed correctly you will find you can negate the effects of the weight gain recipe and even enhance your weight loss.

HEALTH WARNING: This method of weight loss will only work with a calorie controlled diet. Please see your doctor if you have any pre-existing health conditions.

Pics courtesy of:

http://antibioticsandalcohol.net/

http://www.smccd.edu/accounts/salahuddinr/

http://showmethecurry.com/category/odds-ends

A Recipe for Successful Weight Gain

Weight yoyo-ing is apparently usual in Delhi due to the change in temperature between winter and summer. Mine may have been a little bit more extreme. Gillian McKeith watch out, here’s how I did it:

Ingredients:

Lashings of Ghee 

Butter naans 

Karti rolls 

Anything with paneer 

Greasy but available Western food: burgers, pizzas, fries

Sundaes

Cheap local chocolate: 5 star bars are ideal

VSO volunteers

New surroundings

Sugary Chai

First take a change in surroundings and embark on a VSO in-country orientation programme in Delhi. Mix the following ingredients in a big pot: boring hostel food such as watery dahl and rotis, the same rice and pickle every day and soggy toast every morning. Simmer for a while. Chuck in a new set of colleagues and put around 18 in tiny shared rooms for 4 weeks. In order to make sure the ingredients cook correctly attend the really intense Hindi lessons.  Ensure all bonding sessions are done over food and meals out.

Once the broth has simmered for a week or two, add the greasy but available Western food at Eatopia and McDonald’s. At this point be careful of your morals when it comes to globalisation, you may have to discard these for the sake of your mental wellbeing. Continue to add a smattering of fries and McAloo Tikki burgers every few days. Stir occasionally.

At the end of the second week add in the plentiful local supply of new, cheap and tasty food at Gulab’s and other restaurants in Mehar Chand market.  Be liberal at this point. Don’t spare on any of the Butter Naans, Karti rolls, paneer or anything with ghee.

You will find this result reinvigorates your tastebuds and your appetite. Take at least one portion of the meal daily and add in some comfort chocolate such as the local 5 star bars if you wish to have quicker results. After 4 weeks, add the start of a cold Delhi winter, some accommodation issues, two extra weeks in a guesthouse and plenty of warming sugary Indian Chai.

After a few months you will find the recipe has been successful. If followed correctly you could gain anything from 5 – 10 kg.

Next instalment coming soon: Recipe for Successful Weight Loss

 

Easter in Varanasi – Bodies, bulls and bacteria

In Delhi they say travel before April when it really hots up in India. Two other volunteers, B and N, and I decided on a last trip to Varanasi before the summer months. On the day we arrived at New Delhi train station in good time. The boards weren’t showing our train and the enquiry desk had a queue of people that snaked almost out of the station. We went up to the bridge that crosses all platforms and each board above each platform was showing different information than the boards downstairs. Dodging porters with three suitcases apiece on their heads and the occasional sleeping body we traversed the bridge looking at each board. None showed our train number. We went downstairs. The boards were stuck over an hour behind at 5.30pm and we were due to leave at 7pm. We had 20 minutes to find our train. Panic was going to set in soon.

After another few runs of suitcase dodging and body hurdling we were getting desperate. We eventually found three men that looked like they might know. Platform 9 they said and we ran. T minus 5 minutes and counting. People trundled along in the heat, toddlers sprang out of nowhere and huge families blocked our path. On the bridge we reached platform nine. No train number was apparent as we hurtled past and down the stairs. We checked the charts plastered on the carriages. It was the right train but we were another six carriages away from ours.

Suddenly the train started moving. Luckily the health and safety rules that exist in other countries don’t in India. We ran to the nearest open door and jumped on the moving train. We walked down the train sweating and laughing to the amusement of our fellow passengers. Two carriages down and the door to the next carriage was locked. A passenger told us the door would be opened after five or so minutes. After ten minutes the door was still locked and the train had stopped at another station. We made another run for it.

I shouted to the other two that we’d reached our carriage and to hop on at the next door. I heard a shout back as the train started to move, ‘It’s locked!’ We ran back screaming and laughing with our rucksacks on. It must have been great entertainment for the usual passengers strewn around the platform waiting for their delayed trains. ‘Quick get on, get on!’ ‘Hurry up and get out of the way!’ Spectators wouldn’t have needed English to understand what was happening.

We finally found our seats. As we were in different parts of the carriage we decided to take three seats in one berth and hope we wouldn’t be moved on. We spoke in pidgin Hindi and English to the man in the remaining bunk. He later laughed at us bored playing The Name Game and told us there is an Indian equivalent called Antakshari meaning last letter.

We had the usual staring from male passengers but our friend was gracious and friendly. Helping to find out what had happened when we didn’t get blankets and there was no food service. It was a new train, named the ghost train by B. No wonder it hadn’t existed at the station. I was grateful for his presence when I woke up in the middle of the night to a man sat on my bed as my friends were sleeping soundly in their upper bunks. I sat up speechless upon the sight of the stout greying man dressed all in white. The apparition spoke to me in Hindi and prodded my rucksack which had been jammed behind my head. Baggage thieves are notorious on Indian trains. I said ‘Kya?’ (what?) It was all I could muster but it was enough to wake my fellow passenger who firmly spoke to him. I could make out he was saying this is not your compartment, go and find your own. He floated out backwards with a monologue moan, ‘sorrisorrisorri’. I half expected to hear a rattle of chains as I thanked our friend before rearranging my baggage and settling down to what was then a fitful sleep.

We arrived to the usual barrage of touts and phoned our guesthouse for our pick-up. We did not disembark from our auto at the guesthouse but outside the tiny streets that lead to the ghats. With baggage in tow we trundled after our guide in 40 plus heat dodging cowpats, hawkers and temple-goers until we made it to the Ganges and our guesthouse. After dumping our luggage we went to explore the ghats and the tiny maze-like streets.

Whilst walking past a stall, we noticed a Deaf guy signing to his friend. I said hi and we got chatting to him and his three friends. We took them up on the offer of being shown round the next day and some sari shopping. I love how the Deaf community is so small. When you bump into anyone in the world you find out they know the same people. They’d all met the Director of my organisation at campaign rallies for the rights of Deaf people. In the heat we let our new friends and moved on to find lunch and much-needed shade.

Shortly after, we nearly got run over by a dead body under a colourful cloth being carried aloft on a stretcher by six men. Draped with garlands of flowers they made their way between the piles of wood for cremation down to the ghats where the body would be burnt on a pyre. Rumours are rife of body parts being seen floating down the river as poorer families can’t afford the more expensive wood needed to fully burn a body. On a sunrise boat trip, we saw the strange sight of people sifting ash by the funeral pyres for jewellery and gold teeth.

Varanasi was a strange delight and our eventful train journey should have been an omen of what was to come. A fun afternoon was spent marvelling at famous Banares Saris with our new Deaf friends. It was relief to get off the streets where the goats munch garbage and buffalos wait to be milked. A particularly grumpy one had seen my red kurta and tried to go for me. A local man had to lead me back shielding me from the bull to get back to my friends. When I thanked him he broke out into a grin and charmingly said, ’You do not need to thank me. It is my right and my privilege to help you in my country. I spent the next few days wondering how I had managed to pack what seemed to be everything red in my wardrobe.

We ended our last day by having a lassi with our Deaf friends. As I was signing away I could see passers-by forming a small crowd until they got bored and moved on. I could hear the lassiwala say to B and N, ‘she knows their language?’ It strikes me as ironic that this humble man who lives with a buffalo outside his shop understood immediately that sign language is another language. How is it possible that some members of the government fail to comprehend this when they suggest ISL is merely a set of gestures relating to Hindi?

Unfortunately that lassi was what probably gave us the bug that left N ill on the train home that evening. B wasn’t feeling too great either. We didn’t get our waitlisted tickets for our original train back causing more chaos at the station. The one we got instead went to East Delhi forcing us to get a Metro back into town. Lucky for us we had got chatting to a passenger who led us to the Metro station. I’d explained that B and N were ill. He marched me to the front of an hour long queue for tickets. When the man behind me protested he responded, ‘These are guests in our country. You should treat them as such.’ I was received with a gesture to move forwards to the ticket window which I gratefully accepted under the circumstances. When we parted at the Metro interchange he made sure we got to the correct platform and I shook his hand vigorously marvelling again at the kindness of strangers. Thankfully my bacteria decided to strike only after I’d gone home and been to the shops for supplies. I’ve been pretty much hunkered down since we returned two days ago and have been swallowing antibiotics regularly ever since. I’m definitely heading back to explore more of Varanasi in the cooler months. Next time I think they’ll be no ghost trains, no lassis and definitely no red clothes.