Apu’s World

Obesity and the health issues that accompany it have long been a subject of intense discussion in the Western world, where the abundance of super-cheap and highly processed foods has been linked to many health disorders. David Kessler’s, The End of Overeating is an important addition to the books written on the subject - why, we shall come to a little later.

Kessler has the background to take on this complex subject having served as commissioner at the US Food and Drug Administration. He is also a man who has grappled with weight issues, giving him a more personal interest in the subject.

One of the biggest strengths of The End of Overeating (and the reason why I called it an important book) is that Kessler articulates convincingly a position on obesity that moves it away from the issue of individual control and choices (’if you’re fat, you have no willpower, and you really ought to control yourself’). He acknowledges that while for a large part of America, calorie intake is outpacing calorie absorption, it’s not as simple as ‘having the willpower to say no’. (Kessler also acknowledges that a small percentage of obese people are obese due to other medical reasons and that ‘hypereating’ is not restricted to obese people.)

Kessler advances his position by taking a close look at the food and restaurant business, and how it gets consumers to eat larger portions, eat more often, eat at any place, eat at more locations, eat more indulging foods and eat mind-blowing combinations of fat-sugar-salt that make us want to - well, eat some more. He also goes to some length to explain how overeating can become a habit, by conditioning and by altering the stimulus-reward circuits in the brain. By indulging in high calorie foods, which offer a temporary but pleasurable sensation, we are primed to remember those sensations the next time we come across the same stimulus.

If all this sounds esoteric, think of a food experience that you particularly crave - perhaps a burger at a particular fast-food joint, perhaps a particular brand of chocolate and think about how hard it is to turn away from the treat it promises. That is what Kessler is talking about, and this book helps us to understand why we don’t just ’say no’. The first 3 sections, ‘Sugar, Fat, Salt’, ‘The Food Industry’ and ‘Conditioned Hypereating Emerges’ are all about dissecting the problem, and are the strongest parts of the book.

One quibble is that Kessler sometimes stops short of covering an individual’s story in sufficient detail, preferring to move on to the next of numerous chapters. For instance, in one chapter, he interviews Jerilyn Brusseau, the creator of Cinnabon, a cinnamon roll bakery that started off as a small store offering a ‘treat’, but is now part of the pandemic of chain stores rushing to pad your waist (and line your heart).

He goes on to end the chapter with, ‘Balance was something Brusseau once lacked in her own life. In her twenties, thirties and forties, she battled bulimia and anorexia. A chef and restaurant operator who lived her days surrounded by tempting indulgences, there had been a time when Brusseau lost all sense of when she was hungry and when she was full.’ Now, what is one to make of an ending like that? A gourmet bakery owner’s complicated relationship with food - yes, interesting, but why tell us about it if you are only going to throw in stray tidbits? Kessler does this when talking about people, but when he gets to the science, he is painstaking.

One suspects that Kessler would have done well to stop with this thorough analysis of the problem rather than extend the book to offering solutions as well. The next 3 sections, ‘The Theory of Treatment’, ‘Food Rehab’ and ‘The End of Overeating’ are somewhat disappointing in their generality when compared with the rigorousness of the first half. While there are a few useful suggestions, they don’t go beyond what commonsense suggests, nor are they buttressed with any studies or other information on their efficacy. They veer dangerously close to the ‘you can stop eating if only you try’ approach that Kessler disses in the first half.

Some of the suggestions don’t take the social context into account adequately; what of the fact that healthy eating in Western societies (especially the US) takes more money than eating junk food? What of the loss of cooking skills in many families and young people? Kessler doesn’t address these issues when he advocates healthier eating.

Nor is there a special focus on women and food, which is surprising, given the greater social expectations from women to maintain a desirable weight, and the pressure it creates amidst the constant food cues in the environment.

Despite these drawbacks, The End of Overeating is an interesting read for anyone who has struggled with weight or with the expectations of desirability in an increasingly appearance-conscious world. Those of us living in India can already see the wholesale import of Western brands and lifestyles into what was a slower and more wholesome way of eating. For us, it may be the Beginning of Overeating, but that is no reason we shouldn’t be better prepared.

Publisher: Penguin Books/Penguin India

Price: Rs. 399

apu The Literary life

For a long time, it seemed to me as if all Indian writers in English wrote “serious” things - complicated stories, language that needed some getting through, “big” themes, weighty tomes. And then came Chetan Bhagat and the many followers in his footsteps, who unleashed upon us a spate of poorly-written novels, mostly to do with engineering institutes and adolescent angst. It seemed as if one could either have 5-star hotel caviar or roadside vada pav; if you weren’t in the mood for the first and couldn’t stomach the second, poor you!

Luckily, times are changing. In the last couple of years, Indian writers in English are attempting every possible genre, including murder mysteries and graphic novels. There is a growing market for well-written, yet easy-to-read fiction, which is probably why Penguin has brought out a new series, Metro Reads, dubbing them “fun, feisty, fast reads.”

One of this series, Paritosh Uttam’s Dreams in Prussian Blue, would probably not qualify for the ‘fun’ bit, given its somewhat serious story, but it fulfils the rest of the criteria. Dreams in Prussian Blue is the unconventional love story of art college dropouts, Naina and Michael. The novel sticks to a small group of characters and does that well - while Michael is the anti-hero, Uttam takes the reader to the darkness behind seemingly ‘nice’ and bland characters as well.

The bonus is that while the story is novel and the characters real, the language is simple enough for the average reader. A live-in relationship, a selfish artist, a naive young woman who realizes that love and fresh air may not be enough, the Indian art world, nosy neighbours and traditional parents who can no longer hold on to their children -  the plot moves forward quickly, and kept me engrossed wanting to know what happens (and plenty does!) The dialogue works too, with the lingo of the 20-something crowd captured well.

It so happened that the last few weeks, I’ve been snowed under work and reluctant to take on anything too complicated. Dreams in Prussian Blue fits perfectly into that sort of mood - when all you want is a good story.

Publisher: Penguin India

Price: Rs. 150

apu The Literary life

A week or so ago, through a Facebook group, Amazing Passages from Favourite Books (totally worth checking out, btw), I revisited Tonight I can write the saddest lines, one of Chilean writer Pablo Neruda’s best known poems.

In the Youtube video above, it is being read beautifully by actor Andy Garcia. (Isn’t it amazing how sometimes, less is more when it comes to a performance?)

From the poem, these lines stayed with me, Love is so short, Forgetting is so long. Indeed, in that one line, it can be said that Neruda has summed up all of human existence, or at least a big part of it.

Love is short. Many things break it up, and I’m not just talking of romantic love. Blood relationships break less easily, but even there, there is plenty of scope for complexity. While we like to eulogise the unconditional love between parent and child, even there, there is and can be jealousy, anger, sometimes even apathy. (We need to talk about Kevin is a book that looks at one very dark parent-child relationship - it’s a book that sent shivers down my spine when I read it).

So yes, love is short - people change, things change and worst of all, death happens. Inspite of this, we invest of ourselves in many relationships. Sometimes, I feel as though our love and passion for certain people makes us impervious to the fact that there is no such thing as forever.

Logically speaking, we know that heartache will find us, sooner or later, but we prefer not to think about it. Is this bravery or foolishness, I am unable to say. All I can say is that forgetting is so hard.

apu In General, The Literary life

Penguin First Proof is an annual volume by Penguin that aims at promoting the ‘best new writing’ from India. I haven’t read any of the first four volumes, but volume 5 goes some way to convincing me that it’s worth looking out for this series annually.

‘Some way’, because while the anthology covers wide ground - non-fiction, fiction and poetry - it is uneven ground. What is interesting is that it doesn’t include just new writing in English - it includes translations from Indian languages, though these are fewer compared to the pieces written in English.

It is the non-fiction that made me feel let down - somehow, it feels as though many of the pieces were chosen for their content than for any literary merit. Bisakha Datta’s The Many Lives of Roma D is a nuanced and vivid portrait of a sex worker in Kolkata, while Aditya Sinha’s Natural Desires details with wit an uncomfortable father-son relationship that is unique in its particulars, but surely familiar as an idea to most Indians.

These were the exceptions. Pieces such as Krupakar and Senani’s Kidnapped, based on the authors’ kidnapping by the sandalwood smuggler Veerappan and Satnam’s Jangalnama, an account of time spent with the Naxalites felt dull, never quite moving beyond a literal account. Curiously, both these are translations, from Kannada and Punjabi respectively, so I wonder if this insipidness was a function of the writing or translation.

It is in the fiction that Penguin First Proof 5 really works. K.R. Meera’s Ave Maria, the first story in this section is the story of a despairing and dysfunctional Malayali family set against the backdrop of the Communist movement in the state in the 50s. After ploughing through the uninspiring non-fiction, it prepared me for what was to come. For, each one in this section is a short story worth reading - beautifully written and laying bare with a sharp scalpel a character or mood or moment.

Apart from Ave Maria, my favourites here were Batul Mukhtiar’s Your Room, a sad story of a sad relationship (written with so much grace and delicacy) and Aditya Sudarshan’s The Imaginary Friend, a story that anyone who has ever been exasperated with a child will relate to. (Aditya Sudarshan is one writer I would like to read more from, having enjoyed his debut novel, A Nice, Quiet Holiday as well).

As for the poetry, I’m going to reserve specific comments, because, although I did not enjoy it too much, I don’t trust myself as a poetry reader!

Publisher: Penguin India

Price: Rs. 250

apu The Literary life

Some weeks ago, a friend and I were discussing MNIK. Short version : She liked it, I didn’t it. So, she suggested that perhaps I don’t have enough of that ‘willing suspension of disbelief‘ that the poet Coleridge suggested as essential for readers to digest fantastic tales.

I realized that was true, when I read Smita Jain’s new murder mystery, Piggies on the Railway, the first in what promises to be a series of ‘Katie Kumar mysteries.’ Why else would the first things to occur to me be that junior-IPS-officers-turned-detectives surely don’t make enough money to acquire Tahiliani outfits or that female IPS officers are rarely posted to combat zones like the Maoist heartland of Chattisgarh?

Yet, despite many such (what seemed to me) factual unlikelihoods, Piggies on the Railway isn’t an entirely bad read. It mixes up chik-lit and detective fiction genres, and in the process ticks many boxes that are perhaps a must for your average page turner. Gorgeous men. Tick. Plenty of sex. Tick. Dead bodies. Tick. A detective with a personality. Tick. Multiple suspects and multiple motives. Tick. Katie Kumar, the detective and narrator is partly unbelievable, but still funny enough to entertain.

If there is a bigger grouse, it is that the book is too long to be a totally easy read. I mean, 400 pages? Tranquebar could have devoted some energy to pruning it down to a more manageable 250 pages or so. Towards the latter half, one feels as if the author is playing some sort of roulette by spinning around suspects and motives and possibilities, until the story becomes almost difficult to keep track of. Numerous affairs and side plots add to the complication.

This is one murder mystery that could do with fewer twists and turns.

Publisher: Tranquebar Press

Price: Rs. 295

apu The Literary life