Why Indians are stressed and unhealthy

Manmohan Singh had his arteries bypassed on Saturday, a procedure that
increasing numbers of Indians are having. Last year, medical journal
Lancet reported a study of 20,000 Indian patients and found that 60
per cent of the world's heart disease patients are in India, which has
15 per cent of the world's population.

This number is surprising because reports of obesity and heart disease
focus on fat Americans and their food. What could account for Indians
being so susceptible -- more even than burger-and-fries-eating
Americans?

Four things: diet, culture, stress and lack of fitness.

There is no doctrinal prescription for vegetarianism in Hindu diet,
and some texts explicitly sanction the eating of meat. But
vegetarianism has become dogma.

Indian food is assumed to be strongly vegetarian, but it is actually
lacking in vegetables. Our diet is centred around wheat, in the north,
and rice, in the south. The second most important element is daal in
its various forms. By weight, vegetables are not consumed much. You
could have an entire South Indian vegetarian meal without encountering
a vegetable. The most important vegetable is the starchy aloo. Greens
are not cooked flash-fried in the healthy manner of the Chinese, but
boiled or fried till much of the nutrient value is killed.

Gujaratis and Punjabis are the two Indian communities most susceptible
to heart disease. Their vulnerability is recent. Both have a large
peasant population -- Patels and Jats -- who in the last few decades
have moved from an agrarian life to an urban one. They have retained
their diet and if anything made it richer, but their bodies do not
work as much. This transition from a physical life to a sedentary one
has made them vulnerable.

Gujaratis lead the toll for diabetes as well, and the dietary aspect
of this is really the fallout of the state's economic success. Unlike
most Indian states, Gujarat has a rich and developed urban culture
because of the mercantile nature of its society. Gujaratis have been
living in cities for centuries.

His prosperity has given the Gujarati surplus money and, importantly,
surplus time. These in turn have led to snacky foods, some deep fried,
some steamed and some, uniquely in India, baked with yeast. Most
Indians are familiar with the Gujarati family on holiday, pulling out
vast quantities of snacks the moment the train pushes off.

Gujarati peasant food -- bajra (millet) roti, a lightly cooked green,
garlic and red chilli chutney, and buttermilk -- is actually supremely
healthy. But the peasant Patel has succumbed to the food of the
'higher' trader and now prefers the oily and the sweet.

Marathi peasant food is similar, but not as wholesome with a thick and
pasty porridge called zunka replacing the green.

Bombay's junk food was invented in the 19th century to service
Gujarati traders leaving Fort's business district late in the evening
after a long day. Pao bhaji, mashed leftover vegetables in a tomato
gravy served with shallow-fried buns of bread, was one such invention.

The most popular snack in Bombay is vada pao, which has a batter-fried
potato ball stuck in a bun. The bun -- yeast bread -- is not native to
India and gets its name pao from the Portuguese who brought it in the
16th century. Bal Thackeray encouraged Bombay's unemployed Marathi
boys to set up vada pao stalls in the 60s, which they did and still
do.

The travelling chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain called vada pao the
best Indian thing he had ever eaten, but it is heart attack food.

Though Jains are a very small part (one per cent or thereabouts) of
the Gujarati population, such is their cultural dominance through
trade that many South Bombay restaurants have a 'Jain' option on the
menu. This is food without garlic and ginger. Since they are both
tubers (as also are potatoes), Jains do not eat them, because in
uprooting them from the soil, living organisms may be killed (no
religious restriction on butter and cheese, however!). The vast
majority of Ahmedabad's restaurants are vegetarian. Gujaratis have no
tolerance for meat-eaters and one way of keeping Muslims out of their
neighbourhoods is to do it through banning 'non-vegetarians' from
purchasing property in apartment buildings.

Even in Bombay, this intolerance prevails. Domino's, the famous pizza
chain, has a vegetarian-only pizza outlet on Malabar Hill (Jinnah's
neighbourhood). Foreigners like Indian food, and it is very popular in
England, but they find our sweets too sweet. This taste for excess
sugar extends also to beverage: Maulana Azad called Indian tea 'liquid
halwa'. Only in the last decade have cafes begun offering sugar on the
side, as diabetes has spread.

India's culture encourages swift consumption. There is no conversation
at meal-time, as there is in Europe. Because there are no courses, the
eating is relentless. You can be seated, served and be finished eating
at a Gujarati or Marathi or South Indian thali restaurant in 15
minutes. It is eating in the manner of animals: for pure nourishment.

We eat with fingers, as opposed to knives and forks, or chopsticks,
resulting in the scooping up of bigger mouthfuls. Because the nature
of the food does not allow for leisurely eating, Indians do not have a
drink with their meals. We drink before and then stagger to the table.

As is the case in societies of scarcity, rich food is considered good
-- and ghee is a sacred word in all Indian languages. There is no
escape from fat. In India, advertising for healthy eating also shows
food deep fried, but in lower-cholesterol oil.

The insistence by family - 'thoda aur le lo' -- at the table is part
of our culture of hospitality, as is the offering of tea and perhaps
also a snack to visiting guests and strangers. Middle class Indians,
even families that earn Rs10,000 a month, will have servants. Work
that the European and American does, the Indian does not want to do:
cooking, cleaning, washing up.

Painting the house, changing tyres, tinkering in the garage, moving
things around, getting a cup of tea at the office, these are things
the Indian gets someone else to do for him. There is no sense of
private space and the constant presence of the servant is accepted.

Gandhi's value to India was not on his political side, but through his
religious and cultural reforms. What Gandhi attempted to drill into
Indians through living a life of action was a change in our culture of
lethargy and dependence. Gandhi stressed physical self-sufficiency,
and even cleaned his toilet out himself.

But he wasn't successful in making us change, and most Indians will
not associate Gandhi with physical self-sufficiency though that was
his principal message. Indian men do no work around the house. Middle
class women do little, especially after childbirth. Many cook, but the
cutting and cleaning is done by the servant. Slim in their teens, they
turn thick-waisted in their 20s, within a few years of marriage.

Since we are dependent on other people, we have less control over
events. The Indian is under stress and is anxious. This is bad for his
health. He must be on constant guard against the world, which takes
advantage of him: the servant's perfidy, encroachment by his
neighbours, cars cutting in front of him in traffic, the vendor's rate
that must be haggled down. Almost nothing is orderly and everything
must be worried about.

In the Indian office, the payroll is a secret, and nobody is told what
the other makes. Knowledge causes great stress, though the lack of
information is also stressful, leading to spy games and office gossip.

Because there is no individualism in India, merit comes from seniority
and the talented but young executive is stressed by the knowledge that
he's not holding the position he deserves. Indians are peerless
detectors of social standing and the vertical hierarchy of the Indian
office is sacrosanct.

Dennis Kux pointed out that Indian diplomats do not engage officially
with an American of lower rank, even if the American was authorised to
decide the matter. In the last decade, when Indians began owning
companies abroad, the Wall Street Journal reported on cultural
problems that arose. Their foreign employees learnt quickly that
saying 'no' would cause their Indian bosses great offence, so they
learnt to communicate with them as with children.

Indians shine in the west where their culture doesn't hold them back.
In India honour is high and the individual is alert to slights from
those below him, which discomfort him greatly.. There is no culture of
physical fitness, and because of this Indians don't have an active old
age.

Past 60, they crumble. Within society they must step back and play
their scripted role. Widows at that age, even younger, have no hope of
remarriage because sacrifice is expected of them. Widowers at 60 must
also reconcile to singlehood, and the family would be aghast if they
showed interest in the opposite sex at that age, even though this
would be normal in another culture.

Elders are cared for within the family, but are defanged when they
pass on their wealth to their son in the joint family. They lose their
self-esteem as they understand their irrelevance, and wither.

 

The writer is a former newspaper editor who lives in Bombay.

Email: aakar..patel@gmail.com