It’s the latest fad in the city and it’s called the paparazzi diet, but I wouldn’t have known about it if my wife’s friend Sarla hadn’t got spooked when she spotted a photographer heading her way. “You’ve got to hide me,” she said, ducking behind a potted aspidistra. I looked on curiously as she spat out her salmon and goat cheese crostini into a napkin, tucking the proof away in her jewelled minaudiere. From the same bag, she whipped out a tube of lipstick to touch up her lips while removing all evidence of asparagus cigars and wasabi lamb tarts. A quick whiff of perfume, a glance in the mirror, the glass of chardonnay hastily pushed out of sight, and Sarla abandoned her spot behind the leafy plant just as the photographer reached the spot. “Darling!” Sarla air-kissed cheeks she’d been ignoring till then, pouting and posing for the benefit of the photographer. “Haven’t seen you for so long,” she said to someone I didn’t think she even knew.
The paparazzi diet, my wife explained to me later, had been fuelled after Kalli Purie’s book on serial dieting spilled open a can of worms on how women starve themselves before a wedding, or party, in an attempt to appear slim. But soon, binge eating adds the pounds back faster than it’s shed, leading to the Page 3 media – or social press, which my wife’s friend Padma describes as extremely “uncivil” because they’ve not printed her pictures – referring to the dieting fashionistas as serial bulimics.
“They’d snidely ask Sarla if she was off her hundredth, or thousandth, diet if they spotted her biting into a satay,” though it wasn’t just Sarla feeling victimised as society women all over the capital began to resent the presence of paparazzi photographers where earlier they’d fawned over them. It led to griping sessions at kitty parties, and though no one is sure who proposed it, pretty soon every socialista had sworn to refrain from snacking in public. The benefits of abstinence from indiscriminate bingeing caught on as a diet recommended by nutritionists. “Leena’s therapist told her to make sure to attend at least two parties at least five days every week,” my wife said. When they weren’t invited, Sarla, Padma, Leena and Co threw their own parties, making sure the paparazzi photographers were included. Those caught posing for pictures with a cocktail in their hands were penalised by their peer groups, and being photographed with a kebab was the social equivalent of hara-kiri. Photographers no longer wielded cameras as much as instruments of blackmail.
But weights and waists stayed alarmingly static, the Page 3 diet associated less with size zero than with status quo. “Hardly surprising,” smirked my wife, having figured out why Sarla – a major disciple of the cult – had gained weight on the diet. Taking me around a pillar, she showed me a stack of bones and empty glasses hidden behind the planters, the result of the secret eating habits of the fashionable set away from the photographers. “It’s not likely that I’d starve,” Sarla said, joining us with a thin-crust pizza in hand, “but if you’ll excuse me now, I must step out to tell the world how not eating at parties is the best thing that could have happened to me.”
