“Weight Loss”: A Short Story by… You!

I wrote the following opening to a short story during my coffee break (well, Diet Pepsi break, to be exact) this morning, and had no idea what I was writing, or why I was writing it. I tend to do this a LOT–hundreds of times a year, even. It’s physically impossible for me to finish every story I write, nor would I want to. Some are just idle explorations of casual ideas I get, and trust me when I say, I get ideas ALL the time. They’re not a dime a dozen, they’re a paisa a ton. The important thing is not the idea, it’s how you develop it.

–Ashok K. Banker,
10 July, 2008

WEIGHT LOSS

by Yourname

So this dude walked in and said he wanted to lose weight. I handed him a form without looking up and continued playing Solitaire on the reception comp. I keep the monitor turned at an angle so nobody can see the screen. For all they know, I’m typing out a path-breaking study on the effect of liposuction on post-menopausal Punjabis in white-collar jobs. I was winning. That’s why I like Solitaire–you always win. I suck at RPGs and MMOGs and everything else. But when it comes to Solitaire, I’m Ace.

“Excuse me,” he said to me. “I need to see someone urgently. I don’t have time to fill in this form.”

I told him he needed to fill in the form to get an appointment with one of the doctors.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t have time. It’s really serious. Can’t you just call somebody and let me explain the problem?”

I glanced at him disinterestedly. He looked normal, decently dressed, average height, average build, bit on the skinny side. Not bad looking, but not handsome or anything. Sort of clean cut and honest-looking.

I repeated the part about filling in the form.

He shook his head. “No, no, no. You don’t get it, it’s urgent! I really–”

“What seems to be the problem, Ashu?”

My left hand flicked out and hit the Escape button, quitting the game. I stood up at the same time, smiling my polite receptionist smile at Dr Archana. “I was asking this gentleman to fill up the form so I could schedule an appointment. But…” I trailed off, waggling my fingers at the client.

The dude turned to Dr. Archana. “I have a serious problem, I need help right away. Please, will you help me?”

“Of course, Mr…?” Dr. Archana flashed her winning smile.

“Vinay. Vinay Upadhyay. Really, I need to lose weight right now.”

Dr. Archana blinked but never lost her smile. “I’m sorry? Vinay, did you say–”

“Yes, Vinay. I need to lose 300 kgs today. Right now. You have to help me.”

I looked the guy up and down again, this time paying serious attention. Now, I’m no electronic weighing scale but there was no way on earth the dude could have been a gram over 50 kgs. Maybe if he had heavy bone structure, 55 kgs. I’ll even go up to 75 to show I’m open-minded, though you would have laughed if you had seen him. He had the kind of gangly bony structure that you see on some people, the kind who usually came in when they were teenagers desperately wanting to pack on weight and beef up, the kind that joined gyms and went on high-protein high-carb diets and struggled to put on 5 kgs over a year, and usually ended up losing half of that when they stopped going to the gym for a week or two. The kind who could eat pizza and burger and samosas all day and never show it.

Dr. Archana glanced at me. She had a slightly concerned look on her Maharashtrian features. There was a wrinkle on her forehead which crinkled her bindi. Her gold bangle jangled on her wrist. I wondered if I should call security, just in case. I could see in her eyes that she was thinking the same thing.

Vinay looked around, perhaps sensing something. “There’s a weighing scale there,” he said, pointing across the reception. It was pretty much empty this time of day. Not many fatties come in at 10:20 a.m. on a weekday morning. We had barely opened a few minutes earlier, and the staff had only just got in. I hadn’t got to the end of my first game for the day.

Vinay walked over to the weighing scale. He looked back at Dr. Archana. “Can I use it?”

Dr. Archana broke off eye contact with me. She smiled, evidently deciding to play along a bit longer. Maybe she figured that once the dude took his weight, he would render his own ‘lose 300 kgs’ bullshit meaningless and be hoist with his own petard, whatever the hell that means, I read it in a story online the night before.

“Please,” she said.

Vinay hesitated, glancing at me as well, as if looking for a witness. I returned his look, wondering idly if the dude was some nutcase. We got a few every now and then, and of course, you could argue that anyone who needed to pay a small fortune just to be told to eat less and exercise more was a nutcase through and through, but this guy was nothing like any client I had seen before. For one thing, he was thin, bone-ass skinny thin. You could see the shape of him through his bush shirt and his knobbly knees through his trousers. My aunt had a Labrador Retriever that weighed more than him, I would bet.

“If anything happens to this weighing scale,” he said, speaking both to me as well as Dr. Archana, “I’ll pay for it. Don’t be concerned.”

I had no idea what that meant. Did he expect us to feel touched by his concern for the weighing scale? Maybe he thought it had senti value? “Be our guest,” I said dryly, unable to resist.

He looked down, then put a foot on the scale, then another foot, in quick succession. He was standing on it now.

There was a moment when nothing happened. Dr. Archana started towards the machine, no doubt to check his weight and start some sales spiel.

Before she took two steps, there was groaning sound. Then a grinding. A kind of gnashing metal noise.

And the weighing scale grunted and dropped several inches, tilting sideways, then, with a loud metallic protest, warped and twisted and bent. The glass display and various plastic or non-metal parts inside it shattered and snapped and cracked. Then it lay still, and silent. And dead. He had just killed the weighing scale.

Vinay Upadhyay got off the scale and looked at us, arms spread by his sides, slightly raised, palms up. His head was tilted down, turned at a questioning angle. “You see?” he said. “Do you see now?”

Dr. Archana moved to the weighing scale, staring down at it as if at a dead cat she had suddenly discovered in the waiting room. “I don’t understand,” she said.

Vinay smiled for the first time. “The scale had a limit of 150 kgs, yes?”

She nodded, still frowning.

“My weight today is about 400 kgs,” he said. “And increasing every minute. I’m not sure exactly, but I think it’s going up at the rate of around 10 kgs every hour. If I don’t bring it down to below 100 quickly, it may be too late. Please, will you help me now?”