The Satyam Diet

I lost weight during the year I spent working in India. Most of it can be attributed to the Satyam Diet plan that I followed in Bangalore. My eating habits changed to accommodate my work schedule. My hours spent in the office were from around 10 in the morning to 7 at night. One hour on each side could be added as traveling time. Since my carefree existence allowed me to indulge in at least nine hours of sleep a night, by the time I woke up and got ready, there was no time for breakfast apart from some fruit or juice picked up on the way to work. The office gruel served at lunchtime was so consistent in its putridity that eating even a tiny portion of the fare tormented my taste buds and stripped me of my beloved appetite. Apart from the tasty morsels provided by office belles the amount of food I consumed during the midday meal was severely diminished. With two of the days three meals much smaller than I regularly had, dinner became a meal of meals. I would visit the finest establishments around the city, having food of singularly high quality but with a diversity of flavour, ingredients, and preparation.

No diet can be successful unless it combines both food intake and physical exertion. The exercise portion of the diet was provided by the 8 floors I had to climb every time I took a break (a surprisingly large number of times) with my colleagues or went to lunch. There was only one elevator for the many hundreds of employees, and with a significant proportion of these taking a break at any one moment in time, the elevator was always stuffed to overcapacity. The dozens of Satyamites left behind on each trip eagerly hoped that the next time the elevator opened its doors, they would find themselves within its friendly womb. Unable to bear the thought of lost productivity due to waiting for the lift, I resorted to using the stairwells to physically transport myself from the bottom of the building to the top and vice versa. During these breaks, often times I would partake in strenuous games of table tennis. My innate talent was not enough against my experienced opponents, so I had to work on my conditioning and reflexes. Other times I played carrom, a game similar to billiards or pool but played with bare hands.

Combined with the occasional escape from a wild mob or leap from a bus, the Satyam Diet worked wonders. Not only can a job provide opportunities for career development and financial stability, but it can also have a profound impact on other facets of life.

A Year of Change

The year that was will be remembered as a seminal one in the Chronicles of Arnabia. As with any year it was a year of gain and a year of loss, but above all it was a year of change. The hero of our tale concluded his work term in his ancestral homeland of India, then circled the globe spreading goodwill among EU nations, before making a triumphant return to the place of his ARNABirth - Canada.

Not only did the physical location of my residency on Earth change, but also my career path and community involvement. I bade farewell to Satyam Computer Services, my faithful employer during my internship period, and engaged in a new working relationship with ResponseTek Networks where the prospects for developing my technological skill set seem encouraging. I took on greater responsibilities within the local Bengali community, infusing it with youth and receiving from it many learning opportunities about my cultural background. I redefined the ARNABody in a shape so formidable that the many women enrolled in the ARNABstinence program had second thoughts about whether to renew their membership for the new year.

With all these changes in 2007, the stage appears to be set for a more stable year of continued personal growth in 2008, with one significant storyline to look out for being the continued search for the ARNABride.