Why shouldn’t I channel my inner halwaii?

‘Belly-fat reduction’ is what a reader added to ‘anti-ageing’ and ‘gut-health’,  the snake oils I scoffed at last week. Yes, tricks for tummy-suck always find suckers. Me included. Unlike Odysseus aka Matt Damon, I was unable to resist the sirens’ song. This one kept calling out from online ‘islands’, seducing me with washboard-stomach bliss in ‘30 seconds’. And, like those ancient mariners, I was driven to death – by boredom. 

Combining concern, compassion and covert coercion, the smooth promo went on and on. It spoke of Big Pharma and fake diets chaining sufferers to the weight-loss treadmill; showed ‘before and after’ images of taut, bikini-clad women now bursting with energy instead of bursting out of clothes and into tears; revealed a ‘2,000-year-old secret from an obscure Mediterranean island’; trotted out endorsements by dubious doctors; then, ta-da!, it plugged the ‘magic’ powder you simply had to swallow with your morning coffee. Who knows how much monetizable personal info was being secretly stashed away as I remained glued to the screen, awaiting the pot of gold/silver bullet at the end of the addictive spiel. 

Fat-choked liver is the ‘Eureka!’ moment of the belly-blitzing boom. Big deal. Dadi-ma’s karela juice knew it even if it couldn’t spell ‘steatotic’. TikTok’s  #liverdetox has approx 14.8mn posts vs #bellyfat’s 260,000! Sure, fatty liver disease is now clear and present danger, but hack easily biodegrades into hazard. 

Before Page 3 compulsions turned them into lean, mean, gym-driven machines, the prosperity of both netas and sethias was measured on the Paunch Index. Same-to-same globally, classically, traditionally. Think Churchill vis-à-vis J Caesar’s ‘Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look…Such men are dangerous.’  Could Ganesa’s benign bounty be contained within a niggardly tummy? Would Kumbhakarn lose sleep over his belly-reduction pill not working? Will the  Laughing Buddha turn into Grimacing Buddha if he’s obliged to do crunches? And, will the ghatam fall silent without the player’s necessary rotund middle to rest on?

The pot is potent with promise, no? Matka mat todo.

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Alec Smart said: “Yours is the kingdom; keep the power and the glory, Gen Z.”

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