Thursday, August 22, 2013

WEIGHTONOMICS

It was four O'Clock in morning. I was in a rush; I needed to catch an early morning flight. As usual I woke up late. Cab was waiting out for a long time. By far, cab-driver had called me thrice; first two times to ask for the directions and third time to wake me up.
    I hurried through my morning rituals and jumped into the car. The moment my seat hit the car seat a buzzer went up and number NINETY started flashing on the car dashboard. I was not surprised by the buzzer but was certainly surprised by the number NINETY. I was eighty-five kg just a week back and here I am at ninety today; five kgs of gain in a week's time was surely a reason to be surprised and to be worried too. I credited some of this gain to my unfinished morning rituals to soften my guilt.
    Speaking of driver disturbed my thoughts. In a very polite tone he was telling me that I am twenty kg overweight by the standard of taxi service and it means I need to pay extra, over and above the normal taxi fare. I smiled at him, showed him my frequent traveller card and told him, "I have enough balance". I knew that I have at least hundred kgs accumulated under my account. Thanks to taxi company which credits one kg for every 100 kilometers of road travel. 
    In the company of my thoughts I didn't realized that I am already at airport. I jumped out of the car leaving five kg discount coupon as a tip for the driver. 
    Standing in a check-in queue, like any other passenger, I too was thinking about today's overweight kg(OWKG) rate. Recently RBI had pegged Overweight KG to US dollar and I knew that yesterday's running rate was ten dollars for a kg. I couldn't really convert it into rupees. Rupee was on slide since 2013 and ever since it was very difficult to track it's value. Relatively, overweight kg was much stable currency. You could always use US dollars if you are out of overweight kg. However Outlets like McD, KFC, Pizza-hut were keeping new overweight KG currency in a healthy circulation.
    By then it was my time to check-in. I paid twenty new overweight kg notes for my extra twenty kgs and secured my boarding pass.
    I still had some more time before I board the plane. So I stopped by a buffet breakfast restaurant. Obviously I was welcomed by a "Good Morning" and a weighing scale. Buffet rate were linked to the guest's weight. Sitting there, around me, were many weights of different kinds, size and shapes. Looking at them anybody would have told you that WEIGHTONOMY was booming.
    I stepped out of the resto after a filling breakfast and boarded by plane. Sitting there I pulled out a new overweight kg note. It looked very similar to regular Rupee note except for the picture of Mahatma Gandhi. Here was no picture of our regular thin & lean Mahatma Gandhi; instead there was a picture of well rounded and overweight SUMO who had a face of Mahatma Gandhi.

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