Green Tea the present day Sanjeevani

When I stood before the mirror in my suit at a resort in Munnar I could see my waist line bulging like the one you see in the idols of lord Ganesha. Though I generally have a small paunch lovingly bequeathed by my late mother the one I saw in the mirror was a little alarming which I attributed to binge eating during Diwali and assumed would vanish with a strict diet regime. Though I felt a marginal decrease in the waist line the paunch itself was refusing to vanish. My earlier attempts at weight control practiced over a period of 30 years include eating cucumber just before meal, toatally avoiding rice, eating for sometime only millet, running fast in the mornings, walking a short distance every hour among a whole lot of such idiosyncrasies.

The next day our taxi driver took us to the tea museum where a gentleman made a short speech on the virtues of tea drinking. He was saying that there are hardly any obese people in the whole of Japan and China and this he said was because of their love for tea. He further said that the Sanjivini plant brought by lord Hanuman in Ramayana to bring back to life Rama and Lakshmana was none other than the green tea. So immediately on reaching Bangalore I rushed to the departmental store to get the green tea where the sales girl told me organic tea is much better. Needless to say I opted for that. I in turn promoted the same to my niece who tells that only change she observed on consuming green tea was the terrible hunger and stomach cramps she started experiencing. I too started experiencing that. Last week my co-brother visited us and I promoted green tea to him also and I am yet to hear his experience. I and my daughter who started drinking the wonder drink are certainly eating more! Exactly after four months of drinking various brands of green tea and sometimes organic tea now with ginger also recommended by my doctor when I went for treatment of a nagging cough I found to my horror that there is a slight increase in my waistline! In the meantime departmental store owners are going to their banks laughing all the while because of the increase in sales of not just green tea being promoted by me but also increased sale of other food items. Is this not a better way of fighting recession? I wonder why this didn’t strike the pundits in the finance ministries of European countries.