Health, habits and humour

Time of India

21-05-2025

Rahul Phondke has been a prolific writer of humour columns since his childhood days which ended sometime last year. People are still wondering how this happened. He turned to writing humour at an early age in an effort to find some meaning to the angst of life, which he found almost immediately after his first two cans of beer. Based in Singapore, he is extremely sought after by the locals ...unfortunately most of whom happen to be the police. He is an active member on Facebook and can be easily reached...unless he happens to owe you money. LESS ... MORE
Every year, after my medical screening, during which my 50-year-old health habits are interrogated in an embarrassing fashion ('So Mr Phondke do you get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom?'), I resolve to change my eating habits. The plan is the same, to have a super healthy, nutritious diet which would make me so healthy, that most of my body organs would be featured on magazine covers. I tell my inner conscience: 'This year, we shall be healthy.' My inner self which is hoping someone rescues it from my body smiles wearily, for we both know we've been down this winding road before.
Healthy habits, like a car's advertised mileage, are easier to read than experience.
Let's begin with the simplest of them all. Early rising. The ancients said, 'Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.' In my 50s, the 'Early to bed' part is as easy as a Friday evening beer (alcohol free of course). The 'Early to rise' part is a bit of sport, wrestling with an overconfident alarm clock and lifting my eyelids with the tectonic slowness of a weightlifter trying to set a new record. The 'healthy, wealthy and wise' part remains the stuff of dreams. Dreams, which I can only experience if I sleep longer.
Let's move to dieting, the other great wellness mountain to climb. Apparently, to be healthy, one must eat things that taste like damp cardboard (but minus the taste) i.e. Kale, quinoa, chia seeds. If you say these three names fast enough, it sounds like a curse from an obscure Aztec tongue. I once tried a 'green smoothie.' It was enthusiastically recommended by a friend who glows so brightly that we routinely use him in dim light to make better selfies. 'It detoxifies you,' he said with that all knowing confidence. It did. It also assaulted my will to live and made me look longingly at my unwashed socks as a nutritional substitute.
The trouble with dietary recommendations is that keep twisting and turning more frequently than a Rubik's cube. There was a time when food was just food. You ate a banana because it was a banana, not because it had a 'low glycaemic index' or it came with the moral superiority of a superfood. But today, thanks to modern nutrition science, eating has become an exam in biochemistry.
Yesterday, eggs were bad. Then they were good. Then only the whites were good. Then the yolks staged a comeback tour, armed with HDL cholesterol and a 'I-told-you-so' smirk. Bread was once the staff of life. Now it's the weapon of mass accretion unless it's organic, gluten-free and hand-kneaded in the Arctic by a Zen monk from Japan.
You read news like 'Scientists say eating tomatoes good for immune system'. No sooner after you have downed 100 tomato juice breakfasts, you read 'High corelation found between tomato juice and formation of anal polyps which are impressive enough to be displayed at the Louvre'.
Milk, meanwhile, has had an identity crisis. First, it was a symbol of strong bones and commercials featuring smiling mothers with cheerful kids who look like they ace their school exams and get beaten up by the rest of the class during recess. Now, it's been dethroned by a rotating cast of nut impostors; almond, oat, soy and cashew.
And then comes hydration. 'Drink 8 glasses of water a day,' the health gurus chant, like the ancient Vedic sages chanting mantras. Unfortunately, they don't tell you where to store it. After three glasses, your 50-year-old bladder operatically sings 'Stop you fool' in the highest octave. After five, you start doing the dance. So, like a security commando scanning the horizon for lurking assassins, you need to be on the lookout for the nearest 'Restroom' (Basically a toilet but which identifies itself as royalty).
Let's not forget the eleventh commandment: 'Thou shalt walk 10,000 steps a day.' 10,000! Excuse me, that's not walking. Fugitives from law clock less steps. The only way to clock ten thousand steps is wave your business card at an insurance salesman and then try to stay out of his arm's reach.
Let us not even speak of sleep hygiene. The modern rule is, no screens 1 hour before bed, no caffeine after 2 p.m., no blue light, and absolutely no thinking about emails from your boss. That's lovely in theory. In practice, it results in me lying in bed, wide-eyed fearing tomorrow's InBox and counting sheep till I feel sheepish.
Despite all this, we soldier on. We download fitness apps that solemnly tell us, 'Today you were 12% more active than yesterday.' You feel chuffed until you realize that yesterday you attended a birthday party where you had enough cake to shut up Marie Antoinnette and today you just walked to the neighbourhood pub.
And yet, amidst all the comic tragedy, there is something noble. Something absurdly optimistic about our human need to be better. We fumble through protein bars and Pilates, squinting at nutritional labels like a forensic detective. We hope it will be different this time. It often isn't. But sometimes it is. Not all the time, not every day, but in small, unnoticeable victories: saying no to that third samosa, playing Badminton on Sundays (ignore the idlis afterwards) and not meeting your two best friends, Ben and Jerry.
Habits once formed, sink their roots in quickly and it takes a lot of swinging, sweating and swearing to get rid of them. Important is to have a have a sense of humour about it. Perhaps, that's the healthiest habit of all.
Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author's own.