I have a dream...

...of becoming stick thin. As I struggle to run on the treadmill and survive on apples and dream of carbs and sugars and calories, I realize I dream a lot. Apart from chocolate dripping-all-over dreams to me in Hawaii (read: on the beach), I also dream of things that I could do/think of/conceptualize to make this world a better place to live in. For you and for me. Okay, mostly for me!

So, this particular dream is a recurring one. I've been having it for sometime now. And that is why I never forget it. I'd postponed writing about it because I wanted to write about a couple of my dream inventions. But obviously, I do not remember anything else but this one dream.

And I'm quite a 'social-worker' kinda person. So, I have a dream that every woman will be stick thin or have the right curves at the right places. I figured that the best way to do it cannot be exercise. Exercise is not better than anything else. Neither is a diet. The best way to do it is not even cosmetic surgery, but something that comes close to it in terms of the speed in which it happens and in terms of the immediateness of the effect. And no, it is not as disgusting or as expensive or as snigger-worthy as cosmetic surgery. Hold your breath, and listen to this new powerful dream of an invention of mine.

The Meltometer

Yes. The name maybe uninspiring. But the potential that this dream machine has is boundless. It works simply. Doesn't take much geekiness or cowardice to figure this one out. All it needs is a little money, a will to look slim, cleaning tools and someone to do it for ya, and it works like a charm. Want to know how?

This is a small device which works similar to a heating device. Haven't we all learned in school that heat melts? So, this is totally inspired from one small lesson and the only thing I remember from my Science classes.

Description: A small metal box with powerful tools to change one's life. All it needs is a power cord and an over-weight person. No more exercise, no more carrot and apple eating. Indulge in those chocolatey desserts or the Paneer Butter Masalas coz it will all go away in one meltdown! Just 10 steps and you are 'it.'

How to use it :

1. The first step is to have the will and the desire to look slim. Which is not very hard. All you have to do is look at yourself in the mirror every morning and crunch your face to look happy. Or, ask your husband 100 times a day if you've lost any weight after you pushed that table from the kitchen to the pantry which is 2 steps away from the kitchen.

Don't be defeated. The answer will be a 'you look gorgeous' either way. But be persistent. And make sure to repeat the question in your most whining tone. You will ultimately know, if not through an exasperated 'yes' directly, in many other way indirectly. You shall know.

2. The second and fairly important step is to convince the husband that you are obese and that you need the Meltometer. He will dilly-dally and try not to spend money on a Meltometer. He'd rather buy the ESPN Channel. Whining helps, throwing tantrums in front of other shoppers in grocery shops helps. Or, just staring at it longingly (make sure husband is looking at you, but act you dunno he's looking at you) and just shaking your head and muttering some nonsense to yourself helps husband change mind.

3. Buy it. Don't think. This is where your impulses need to work.

4. Wait until husband goes to work.

5. Go to the washroom. Ultimately, all the magic happens here.

6. Stand in the tub. Close your eyes and imagine yourself thin. Crunch your face. Tears may flow the first time you use and experience the magic. However, the tears will slowly become matter-of-fact.

7. Switch on the Meltometer and watch your fat melt away. All the calories, the BMI talk was all nonsense, like this meter will prove! Stop whenever you feel you are skinny enough.

8. Take a cold water bath even if its winter. The cold water will help the body set in the desired shape. Do not dry yourself vigorously with a towel. Just pat yourself dry. Or, if you are not too keen on taking a bath and you are one of those people who can go without a bath for sometime, go ahead and just pat yourself off the grease.

Note: The bath tub will be greasy. Please be careful and continue to stand to lose weight. Research has shown that it certainly feels better to stand with greasy feet than exercise on the treadmill.

9. (Optional) Go, get a pedicure done. You can, of course, wear skirts or shorts to the parlour to get a pedicure done. This is also a good way to show those well-melted legs :)

10. Ta-da! You are happy. Husband is happy because he doesn't have to answer any more questions and hey, you don't have to move that table anymore. You can kick someone else to action!

Advantages:

1. Diseases like diabetes and stress over weight loss will be history

2. You can buy new clothes.

3. You can also decide how thin you want to be. You want to fit into that skinny jeans - go on, melt it all! You want to look all curvaceous in a sari? Make sure to stop before it melts all.

4. Melting is NOT irreversible. You can always eat more chocolates and more samosas with the confidence that you will bounce back.

5. This machine can be used at various stages. Just before your wedding when you are in your 20s, after having a baby in your 30s, when you decide to turn 40 and certainly, when you turn into a grandmom too! Be a hot mother and a grandmother just by standing in your bath tub!

6. Also, feel encouraged and confident that all your ultra-thin cousins and neighbours cannot use this product! All the fat people, take heart and know that this machine won't work with already skinny people who harbour anorexic desires. The machine will glow red and burst when an already skinny person attempts to use it!

7. This product is safe since it is not made in China!

Instead of eating fat-free, you BECOME fat- free. All in a matter of hours and just one credit card- your husband's. Checks accepted too. IF bounced, then the husband is liable to buy the product and new clothes that fit the 'figure-after.'

This dream Meltometer is of limited edition and is available to women only. This has been decided after careful consideration and research on the male race. They like to sweat 'a lot' and what better way to sweat than running on a treadmill! So, all you men - go for it!

This Christmas, present this thoughtful, heart and body-warming gift to your loved ones and make them love you more!

Since its a dream product, we're also offering 'Go-Grease' tub washing liquid FREE with the meter. All just for $29.99. If you pass this link on to more people and leave favourable comments, this dream machine is all yours for $10.99 ONLY! Comment now, and pass the link now!

***The side effects include broken legs due to slippery bath tub, more men ogling at you, credit card debt, some severe cases of gluttony, raising of husband's expectations and an increase in the melted one's vanity.***

** Other conditions- This product is not yet FDA approved. The Bush administration is looking into the possibility of exporting all the body fat to China. It has been determined that they need it desperately. This comes under the Melamine and other bad things export-import agreement between The People's Republic of China and the USA. The Obama Administration has not commented yet.**

What's in a name?

So, I've been planning this post for a long long time now. But this post totally formed words in my head and here I am writing at 2.30 AM with an apple in my hand (I'm dieting ) Like many of you know, I'm a Tamilian brought up in a fairly pan-Indian household (Okay, let's exclude my granny, my mom when I turned 15 and my dad quite a few times!) Yes, I was and I'm the only one with the pan-Indian sensibilities. My mom was brought up in Orissa, loosely and proudly termed (by my maternal family) as North India. My mom was a 70's child. Bell-bottoms, long hair left open, all the tight salwars - you name it and she did it. My mom and her siblings were used to being ridiculed on some occasions for being South Indians. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. So, my mom and her siblings made fun of people like you and me and the kind of people that my mom and her siblings are, right now. You can imagine how we grew up :P We did not watch Tamil movies simply coz no one watched them or understood them as well. We loved North Indian food. Dal- Chawal was super cool while Paruppu saadam was frowned upon. We mocked at dappankoothu songs and laughed in public about Rajnikanth. Called Kamal Hassan an Indian actor, played Antakshari with only Hindi movie songs, laughed at Jitendra's Hindi movies and pointed out Hema Malini's accent. However, we loved our thair saadam! Yes, we were hypocrites.

Soon, I turned 22, wiser and certainly a little more prouder than what I was, of being a South Indian, but making sure, at the same time that my Hindi was unaccented and thanked all the Gods - Ram, Shiv and Krishna and my parents that my name wasn't Jayalakshmi, but in fact was/is Nandini. (that is a different story, apart from the fact that Karnataka State's milk was called Nandini milk. Sigh) At 22, my granny decided to turn from the sweet, loving, story-telling, lots of food-giving (to male cousins, and less to girls) to a pestering, conspiring, orthodox Pati who wanted to see the eldest daughter of her only son get married. My mom had become internet-savvy and my dad was becoming increasingly South Indian!

After a year of protest with various excuses of not being ready, I decided to throw a spanner in the works. Trust me, I planned this after a year of observing certain trends at TamilMatrimony.com. I noticed that the community I belonged to had boys with names like Subramaniam, Gopalakrishnan, Hariharamahadevan, Shivasubramanian...and so on. Yes, please add Panchapakesan too. While I do not have my husband's very smart name/surname after my first name even now, I certainly wasn't going to marry any of these guys. While I carefully announced this to my very horoscope-driven family, their first question was if I'd fallen in love with someone from our sister community. All because I complained that grooms from our sister community had ethnic sounding, but nice names - some old-fashioned but with that charm. And they were more handsome (safe word this.). After several arguments, I managed to convince them that I wasn't in love with anyone and I was probably never going to be. Possibly. So, this argument dragged on. My mom'd point out guy after guy and talk of how handsome he was or how our horoscopes matched 100% or how he did not have a mother and no siblings, or was the only kid in the house or of course, how he'd been at IIT- Madras. I found something or the other to push her off. Including marking all her emails as read :P

Finally, one fine day, in one of my placatory moods, I decided to check TamilMatrimony.com and found AB on it. He wasn't from IIT- Madras and was not a S/W engineer. I thought this was good news here and moved on to read that he was brought up in the North! This certainly got me excited and I boldly asked my mom to go ahead. Soon, we had to meet and when I spoke to him, he spoke Tamil fluently and scared the living daylights out of me. I felt I was listening to Sun TV. I kept smiling and nodding my head when I spoke to him. Rather, listened to him. Strangely enough, I'm the talkative one and he is the introvert, silent one! After he left, I told my mom that if nothing else, our relationship'd suffer from severe communication issues. But then everything else worked out and since I spoke to him casually in Hindi (to test his accent :P) and then casually asked him about Hindi movies and was very satisfied that his knowledge was better than mine and his Hindi was extremely good, I decided to go ahead.

But then, sometimes, your life's efforts just go in vain and you just need to accept reality. Who'd have thought otherwise that I have a full-blown blog friendship with every second graduate student in the US who hails from Chennai? Or who'd have thought I try to translate Tamil songs now to understand them better. The translator is, of course, the man who I fight with everyday not to cook morkozhambu or kootu or not understanding a single word in his conversations sometimes, or being the butt of his Tamil jokes against me or to listen ONLY to dappankoothu songs in the car. Sigh. You think all this is not serious eh?

He intends to name my kid if she is a girl : Abithakuchalambal. No, I couldn't bear to hear the kid's name if he turned out to be a boy. I shall cross the bridge when I reach it.