The Stock Market …. and my weight…. (???)

Yesterday, an old pal of mine from College (you know who you are) asked me why I had not written in ages. What can I say, lots of work and lots of to do’s hanging out there. I have great ideas but if you have a Damocles’ Sword handing on your head (metaphorically speaking), it is tough to put your ideas into words. They just always come out flat. I worked hard this weekend and my to do list has now whittled down to almost nothing. Before any new tasks get added and the proverbial sword hangs once again over my head, I thought I ‘d take the time out and write something – anything as long as it has nothing to do with work.

So what do I have to say today? Is there a new gripe I can latch on to or can I dust off an oft repeated theme about my kids who provide me ample material. No, none of that. Today I want to talk about the mess that is the stock market and draw some parallels between stock market and my adventures in weight fluctuations. What does the stock market have to do with my personal weight – not much to the layman but if you follow my convoluted argument, I think you can be convinced. I have done some analysis over the past decade, and I think I have gleaned some parallels.

As we are growing older(not at heart but in age), all of us old fogies are on some diet or the other. Be it to fight bad cholesterol levels, gout, or just plain overweight, we all have our motivations. Some of us have turned teetotalers, and some of us have started downing bowls of salad like we were all goats. Nothing against salad personally, I love salad very much.

Overheard at a recent get-together, “Man, you’ve lost so much weight. What have you been doing”. Overheard at yet another get-together, “Yaar, I like the South Beach Diet. It totally works for me”. At another get together, the host made sure that the guests were made aware that he had lost hajjaar weight. It definitely showed but he just had to rub it in. And then we come to my husband who lately has been attached to the weighing machine – he religiously weighs himself after a bath, before a bath, before going to bed etc. I think he’s secretly in love with eth weighing machine and I think I spied him sending flying kisses its way. As if this is not enough he has to beckon me no matter where I am and how busy I am and show me his latest weight loss. What a loser – pun absolutely intended. Come to think of it, is that not the title of the latest reality show – “The Biggest Loser”.

I was never blessed with “thinness” – if it can be called that. Or in other words, I never can remember a time when someone called me skinny. I was always just a tad bit overweight and I have strived hard to always remain overweight. It’s been tough staying overweight but with sheer perseverance, I have managed the feat. J Growing up, it didn’t help that all the women in my family (My Mom, my sister and my dog) were gorgeous (well, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and to me they were and still are gorgeous) and very, very slender and thin. I may sound like a “poor, poor pitiful me” – but that is because I sometimes felt like it. Most of the time, I was too busy to care but there were a few days when I would get up feeling blue. Those were the days when my poor Mom and sister almost pulled their hair out trying to figure out a way to make me feel better. My Dad was no competition since Guys absolutely do not care about weight.

Like the stock market, I have had some major upticks in the radar. The first one was when I entered the country. My body which was used to the heat, sweat and grime of New Delhi, was in absolute shock when I landed in Toledo, Ohio. And it didn’t help to realize that I absolutely loved Tex Mex food, and Daroo. Within a couple of months, I ballooned a couple of sizes larger than what I was. I lost a couple of pounds here and there but the general direction was up. Kind of like the lateral movement of the stock market with a general upward trend.

The next serious uptick was when I became pregnant. Remember in 2000 when the Dow slid from 13000 all the way to 9000 and then at 9000, there was some traction. That’s how I was. I gained a little in the first trimester and then form the second trimester, there was no looking back. I just kept growing larger and larger. My obstetrician and I would often laugh at the amount of weight I had put on. From then on, I pretty much bade goodbye to all my former clothes. There really was no going back, baby or no baby. This period of weight gain was akin to the irrational exuberance that Alan Greenspan touted through out his tenure. I had pretty much lost all rational thought, I was on the road and made some really poor choices in food – all in the name of a healthy baby.

Fast forward six years, yet another baby and yet another uptick. This time there was no serious damage done since I had Gestational diabetes and hence had to control my weight. This was the cautious investment phase. My poor mother in law, who hd come a-visiting, had to tone down her cooking since I barely could eat anything. All she wanted was to feed her sunbaai and I was pathetic enough to count the number of peanuts that I was eating. I think I pretty much survived on Ham and Swiss Cheese sandwiches for the last trimester or so.

But after the second baby I really have no excuse, my weight still trended upward. After seeing a couple of friends lose some serious weight, my husband and I decided to try some good choices in our food. So from that day onwards, starch was Enemy number 1 and vegetables, meat and salads were my best friends. We haven’t adhered to any one diet but it is just a general hodge podge of diets. It’s mostly my husband’s half baked ideas and long(really long) lectures. Trust me, the man can pontificate for ages on good foods vs bad and exercise vs no exercise. If you think my columns are long, you should hear a sermon by Nallu on the advantages of eating protein every day. Try to stay awake if you can – I dare you.

Anyway, it’s been a couple of months and I have slowly reduced my weight by a couple of pounds or so. And every time I climbed onto the weighing scale and saw that I’d gained back all I had lost, I felt the same sinking feeling you feel when your yahoo portfolio gives back all the gains from the prior week. I hate the weighing scale as much as my husband loves it. Nallu on the other had has lost weight at a rather rapid rate. Any place I go, it doesn’t matter if I went butt naked, I probably would not even get noticed. “Nallu, what has happened to you? Man you’ve lost some serious weight. Kya hua, biwi bahut bhaga rahi hai kya?”. Why do we wives get all the “credit”? I truly have no contribution to Nallu losing weight, he got there all by himself.

So anyway, Thank God weight fluctuations are not exactly like the stock market. I would definitely not want cyclicality in weight gain. So you lose some today and gain some tomorrow. I just want to lose weight once and for all. And that would be that. Back in College, our Economics Professor always said, that in Economics, especially in macro economics, if you collectively think gloom and doom, the economy will be doomed. It’s all about perspective. If you think the stock will fall, the stock will fall. If you think the economy will have negative growth, the economy will have negative growth. It sounded fantastic then but I’ve seen this in action and it really does hold true. It’s all commonsense at the end of the day. The irrational exuberance of 2000’s has now been converted to over conservative investors. The double digit gains in the housing market are now flat if not negative.

There is one parallel that I always wish were true of weight fluctuations. I wish I could just will myself to weight loss. If I think I am thin, I will be thin. Oh on! That never works with me, if I even think thin, I will be that much more hungry that day. So I’m hoping to lose a little more weight. And thanks to Nallu’s overbearing Nature, big bully that he is, he has bullied me, nagged me, scolded me, snatched food away from me and in general has been a royal pain in the you know where. But thanks to him, I have stayed the course and have at least not gained any weight in the past two months. A couple of folks at work have started Jenny Craig and yet a few have joined the Gym. I told them I had lost a few pounds and all they said was, “Really! It does not look like it.”. Little do they know that I have smuggled my weighing scale into the office today and am going to somehow find an opportunity to plonk it on their collective heads. Really, indeed.

The funny thing in this whole battle against weight is that I’m not even sure what weight target to strive for. Most people think that they would be on top of the world if they could get back to their pre pregnancy weight or if they were down to the weight back in 1980. Well, I’ve always been overweight for as long as I can remember, so what weight do I aspire to. Huh! It’s like I’m at the battlefield, and I have an army. Right, now who do I need to fight?

I think I am thin. I think I’m thin. I think I’m thin. I think I am thin. I think I’m thin. I think I’m thin…..

When all else fails, hope and prayer prevail….

A cross sectional study of a romance novel…fictional heroes vs real life heroes…

Author’s note: Some of you may find this article boring – well, read on my friends. Who knows, I may have football scores or cricketing averages or even a non-veg joke. Who knows. As Forrest Gump said, “Life is like a box of chocolates….” 

He takes her hand in his and looks into her eyes with an intensity that could burn one’s soul. She can see the love burning in his gaze and cannot hold back the love that is in her heart. “I love you”, she says, “I love you so much. More than the air I am breathing, more than  my own self”. He smiles at her and says, “I know. I love you too.” And together they hug, secure in the knowledge that they will always have their love for each other to keep them warm during cold dreary nights and a love that will grow strong with each passing season. Together at last. 

Yes, romantic fiction is absolutely that corny. You may think that I copied this stuff out of a book. No – I didn’t have to. I’ve been reading romantic fiction since I was fifteen. I’ve been at it for so long that I can sneeze this stuff out in my sleep. So no, I did not have to refer to a novel to write the above lines. Most romantic fiction novels end in a similar vein. My husband often wonders how I can read romantic fiction. There is a wafer thin plot in most instances. Girl meets boy, they marry and live happily ever after. There truly is no mystery about the final outcome – nah, they always marry in the end. And so his question, how can one read these books when one already knows how the end will pan out. He has a valid point but then how does a film like ‘Titanic’ become a blockbuster. It is not the end but how we get to the end that matters. To quote from a more recent example, Johnny Gaddar, the film all my friends are raving about. I personally thought the film was ok but according to a few of my friends, my husband included this is the best film ever. But getting back to my point, right at the beginning of the film, we see how the film will end but we still watch the movie to see how the story gets there.

A very wise man once said, happiness is found not at the end of the road but along the road. Similarly, no matter how predictable the end is, its how the main protagonists get to that end that matters. The plots may be wafer thin or extremely meandering but the living breathing characters that the authors conjure up are worth the read. I’m always fascinated by the male protagonists – they have such awesome qualities. They always are TDH (Please tell me you know what that acronym stands for. If not, where have you been all this time, Macha? TDH stands for Tall, Dark and Handsome), have always managed to accumulate wealth against all odds, are brilliant at everything they do, and yet are dumb enough to make some stupendous errors in judgment – all to make the plot move forward.  

The ending may be the same in every novel, but there are some other aspects that do change. The settings are slightly different. So romantic fiction can be divided into three broad categories in terms of time period, Contemporary, Victorian and Historical. In the contemporary novels, the female protagonist usually has a poultry farm or a book shop or an inn in a God forsaken village or other such “no prayer in the world of making any money” venture. The female in these novels at least has a backbone and so one can identify more with them. We still have some doormats that adorn these books but I am pleased to note that they are far and few in between. For the most part the female leads are extremely career oriented. Unfortunately for them, the male protagonist just happens to be richer and more successful. Oh well, who can complain about a rich dude who also wears his heart on his sleeve. Not me! 

Historical romance is usually the pre Victorian setting – so way before the women’s suffragette movement. The women here may still have a backbone but they have to be as devious and manipulative as Machiavelli himself to get the story moving. These books are full of historical facts and historical figures. If you heard of Castle Roslyn when the Da Vinci Code came out, you are way behind then. Most of my knowledge of English and Scottish history has been gleaned from these historical romances. 

Victorian novels are my favorite but that is not to say that some of the most annoying novels also come from this category. All the Barbara Cartland novels could give you a major headache. And the heroines of her novels are so badly typecast that they almost grate on your nerves. The Barbara Cartland heroines are true damsels in distress and most of them are also unfortunate enough to have an annoying proclivity towards stuttering by the end of the novel. The final few pages of all BC(Short for Barbara Cartland) novels were all full of dots. “I…………………..…..love…………………………….you”, stutters the female protagonist to the male protagonist with utmost regularity in every BC book. I…..think….I’ve…..just……….about……had…….it…..with…..this……book……..!!!! is my final stuttering thought when I’m done with a BC novel.

 I recently found one of the BC novels actually made into a movie – it is titled “The Devious Duke”, I think. Reading a BC novel is painful enough without having to sit through a one hour feature based on the book.  I found it at the West Windsor Library while I was perusing the Video Cassette bin during their many annual sales. The story was non existent and heroine was grating to say the least and then we come to the hero. Guess who played the devious Duke – none other than Hugh Grant. Can you imagine! The same guy who so brilliantly played the male lead in Notting Hill. The same very guy. Here he was supposed to be tall and muscular and he definitely did not fit the bill. Oh well, I guess he got very desperate to have agreed to the role.  

I was very happy with Enid Blyton’s and Three Investigators till I was fourteen or fifteen. Then one day I had my first crush and that was when romantic fiction made sense. Of  course in India (at least at that time), we had the nonsensical Mills and Boon novels. A more pathetic story line I have yet to read. But they were very popular then. Even within M&B’s you had the Doctor Nurse romance category, the secretary-boss romance category etc etc. I do remember one M&B that I enjoyed. I remember the name even after all these years – “The Duke wore jeans”. But for the most part they really were a ridiculous excuse of a book. 

I’ve been blessed to have made a love match. And there are days when I often wonder how come my hero never does what the heroes in the books do? If I sneeze, he’d make sure to get away from all the germs instead of handing me a tissue and asking me if I were ok. If I were to get a little emotional and dissolve into tears (yes I suffer from that malady), the hero form the romance novel would hold me tight and wait till I finished crying and following that he would hunt down a tissue to wipe my tears away. My husband on the other hand avoids me like the plague when I turn into a watering tap. And then I realize, the romance novel hero is a figment of the “female” author’s imagination. He has all the qualities that a female would love for a man to have. They really don’t exist except in someone’s imagination. That’s why it is called fiction I guess. 

But, by the same token, the men in our lives ain’t so bad. They pick up the slack when necessary. They watch the kids when the girls go out and play. They still take care of the garbage. And they will allow themselves to be dragged to watch a movie they don’t want to – all for us women. They cook for us, sometimes clean up for us and control that urge to burp/fart if need be. They may have their faults and all, but they still very much are our heroes. 

Remington Steele (season one) once said, “What is the point of a large tree falling to the ground in an isolated forest with no one nearby to hear the noise. The loud noise is almost like it never happened.” I think that is what this marriage and love business is all about. Bearing witness to the other person’s life. Caring enough to bear witness.  

A very philosophical Pillu.