Kamal Ghorui
8am Donald Trump has entered our kitchens. Thanks to one orange man, a nation of 1.4 billion brown people is frantically buying induction stoves. I have joined my fellow citizens and am trying to order three. But the dealer tells me that they have run out of the 1600-watt ones and the 1800-watt ones haven’t arrived. Watt is this nonsense?
10am I have just downed a glass of fennel water. Now that I have hit half a century, I have started following a bunch of longevity experts on YouTube. I lunge, squat, research supplements, and every Sunday, segregate these 124-odd pills into my pillbox for the week. I drink vile juices, eat soaked methi seeds, soaked walnuts, and soaked almonds. It’s a miracle that I leave my soaked laundry alone. Sometimes, I think I am dedicating such a large chunk of my life to increasing my lifespan that the net result will be zero.
11am I chance upon a recent video of Trump sitting opposite the Japanese prime minister and making a Pearl Harbour joke. In previous administrations, diplomacy was alive and kicking, now it seems as if Trump has deported it. Meanwhile, I must hand it to our prime minister. He is backslapping Putin, commiserating with Iran, nodding along with Israel, hugging Trump and bridging the gulf with the Gulf via phone chats. This is called global garba. Only Gujaratis know how to circle around in a group without stepping on anyone’s toes.
12.30pm Gen Z never fails to surprise me. The young girls in the office inform me that the newest way they are committing brain rot is by watching AI-generated videos of lentils, fruits and vegetables. I am shown one. Rajma, depicted as an oval, brown animated creature, falls in love with Chawal. She is rounder, feminine in appearance, and is thrilled. Then Rajma gets an overseas job, moves to Mexico, where he falls in love with Taco. There is a part two, but I feel 35% of my frontal lobe has stopped functioning and I may soon lose the rest, so I politely decline.
12.35pm Because I have seen the Rajma Chawal reel, the algorithm drags me to recipes, then to a woman confidently explaining that 1+1 is not 2, and finally to Salma Hayek on a talk show. She says that Trump had once asked her out and she rebuffed him. It makes me wonder if his obsession with building the US-Mexico border wall started before or after her refusal. One could say, he didn’t ‘Taco’ the rejection well. Also, a pun a day may keep the doctor away, but two bad puns in one column are probably signs of cognitive decline. My supplement stack is clearly not working.
2pm Picking at my boring lunch of salad and grilled paneer, I have an epiphany. Trump reportedly survives on Diet Coke and fried chicken, seldom exercises and at 79 still has the energy of a young orangutan as he orchestrates military campaigns, offends the Japanese and crashes global markets. I am clearly following the wrong longevity experts.
5.30pm At the salon, I contemplate getting a French bob because if I can’t control my portfolio, at least I can control my hair. I send a reference photo to a friend who replies, ‘You will look like a cracked person.’ When I relay this to a common friend getting a blow-dry beside me, she dismisses him with, ‘Why are you asking him? He looks like Epstein’s uncle.’ In all the ways one can be linked to an international scandal, this is probably the most original.
8pm Along with keeping track of my calories, I am tracking gold and oil prices. My resting heart rate has risen to match the dollar. 93 beats per minute. Once the dollar crosses 100, I will have to go in for an angioplasty.
In the midst of my woes, the man of the house asks about dinner. I realise that I have forgotten to ask the cook to make anything. ‘Have a sandwich,’ I tell him, ‘There is no rajma chawal today. Rajma has left Chawal for Taco.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, I have seen it myself,’ I say. ‘Also, I have stopped trusting math. Oil prices go up and the dollar instead of dropping, goes up further. 1+1 is not equal to 2.’
‘Of course it is,’ he says.
‘No. If I take one lump of atta and add another lump of atta to it, I don’t get two lumps. Just one big lump of atta. So 1+1=1.’
He says, ‘So along with rajma chawal, you saw a big lump of atta.’
‘No. With Rajma Chawal, I saw Taco. The atta is a different mathematical interpretation.’
‘You are such a pukkao,’ he says. ‘We don’t need those induction stoves. We can just replace the gas cylinders with you.’
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