When the top two buttons of my shirt started socially distancing from their buttonholes, I knew it was time to start dieting. Not the casual “no sugar in tea” type, but something dramatic enough to undo years of late-night biryani damage. So I chose the one-day-meal plan(scientifically proven to make you lose weight, friends, and patience, in that order.)
Since my family was out of town, I decided to skip dinner, skip the next breakfast, and save all my strength for one glorious lunch at Arya Nivas, Trivandrum. After 27 gruelling hours of surviving on oxygen and regret, my excitement reached festival levels. My stomach began making strange gargling noises: the kind you hear from someone's stomach trying to think nothing but all about food for straight 27 hours.
Arya Nivas idlis don’t just feed your stomach; they negotiate directly with your soul. They embody purity, beauty, and grace. Their life-giving presence could make you believe in world peace. The waiter placed them before me with the gentle care of a nurse handing over newborn triplets. Then came the sacred entourage: golden colored sambar, white coconut chutney, green mint chutney, red tomato chutney, and the legendary black mulagai podi in mustard oil.
The idlis were so hot, soft, and fluffy that I felt certain I would float out of the restaurant a kilo lighter. I mixed the podi into the idli, and my eyes watered partly from spice, mostly from happiness. I savoured the vada with sambar and chutney, while the mint chutney sent so much oxygen to my lungs I felt I could run a marathon.
When I ordered more idlis, the waiter gave me a serious look.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re into your tewelth idli. I’ve only seen people with acute depression eat like this. Hope everything’s fine with your family.”
“Tewelth?” My eyebrows tried to climb off my forehead. “There must be some mistake. I think this is my fifth. I can bet my life on it.”
“No, sir,” he said with the solemnity of a judge delivering a life sentence. “It’s your tewelth. I can show you the CCTV footage. High definition, multiple angles, if you want proof.” His eyes lit up like a man who had just cracked a major crime. “Also, you had a couple of vadas.”
Another waiter joined in, like a backup detective arriving at a crime scene with fresh evidence. “One idli weighs around 80 grams,” he announced, consulting an imaginary case file. “You’ve already had eleven. That’s about 700 grams. Add the vadas and you’re just shy of a full kilo.” He looked at me the way a forensic expert might look at an escaped convict.
It took all my willpower not to scoop up the tomato chutney mid-interrogation. A small part of me hoped the idlis would stay warm until I was done wading through this ocean of unwanted, heart dropping youtube-wisdom. Ignorantly I began mixing my twelth idli with sambar, coconut chutney, and mulagai podi, and I swear it looked like a concrete mixture. The spotlight was now so firmly on me, it felt as if the Idli committee was conducting a public inquiry.
“This is my one-day-meal experiment,” I explained, feeling oddly proud. “I’ve been without food for 32 hours.” In reality, it was 27 hours, but I swear: this was the first time I’d ever felt honourable while lying. I sounded like my own lawyer defending a hopeless case, pleading for leniency.
The surprise in their eyes was obvious. Guilt replaced judgment.
"Sorry, sir,” the first waiter said softly. “I thought either you had some family issue or acute depression.”
Moments later, they returned with two more idlis, a vada, and a special spicy chutney. I ate them with all the guilt I could suppress. The chutney had a whiff of Rajasthani folk song. I left the restaurant happy, and only mildly guilty of having consumed more than a kilogram of food in one sitting.
Confession of an idli lover: I didn’t lose any weight that night, but I did lose the respect of two waiters. And possibly my shirt buttons forever.
