Winter's gone, summer will now reveal the excesses of the cool weather

Now that winter is officially over, the indulgences and cravings associated with the season are becoming obvious. However shortlived it may have been, the excesses of the cool weather — dal halwa and stuffed parathas, haleem and bhuna gosht, and extra helpings of dessert — remained mercifully concealed behind layers of warm clothing. Jackets and coats hid the sins of gluttony. The disinclination to go for walks on cold mornings was blamed on pollution, but the truth is that a cup of tea, or jalebis in piping hot milk, were so much nicer enjoyed in the warmth of one’s own bed than worrying about shedding a couple of inches off one’s waist, especially when it didn’t show.

Now that the cladding is off, Delhi’s appetite for the good life is all too apparent. Friends have shed their winter garbs to reveal more of what they already had. Nowhere is Delhi’s disaffection for exercise more pronounced than in the alarming count of bellies in startling view. Sarla’s isn’t the only waist to have taken on a life — and space of its own. Suddenly, the management’s requirement for more office space is making sense. At home, my gym-going son has shed his natty suits to reveal flab the equivalent of an extra person. Even the cook had added a girth that, while wholesome in someone who serves you meals while swaddled up, looks in danger of keeling over now that the extra flesh appears to have a life of its own.

“Well I, at least, have lost two kilos,” declared my wife, bending down to pick up pots and plants, claiming gardening as her mantra for fitness. “Two kilos since you put on five,” jibed my daughter, for it is true that my wife had “prospered” at the start of the cold season. The arrival of festive sweets at home, the “little tastings” when no one was around to keep a check on her culinary curiosity, had added weight and inches to her figure. Now, the loss of a few kilos was not showing, but no one had the temerity to challenge her notification that she alone, among the family, had lost rather than gained weight in the past weeks.

For I too confess to a tightening of the trousers around the waist though, so far, nobody has accused me of putting on weight — yet — because I’ve refused to shed jackets, or waistcoats, even though the daytime temperature has been soaring. Till a few days ago, I claimed the extreme fluctuation in temperature as a reason to keep the warm clothes on. These last few days, I’ve tried to explain it away saying the stuffiness in office requires the airconditioning to be switched on, but which can give you a chill should one already switch to summer wear. But the myth is getting harder to hold on to. We used to read about crazy Britishers who would cling to their manners and tweeds at the height of an Indian summer and were lampooned as “mad dogs and Englishmen”. Holding on to my winter wardrobe may well classify me as one — or the other.

Holi will probably reveal the ugly truth — or fat, if you will. I’ve taken to going on walks, but these have been intermittent at best. But then, what’s a little extra weight when you’ve got on in years? Body shaming is for the young. At my age, I’ve earned my fat. At any rate, I’m holding on to my jacket as long as I can.