Shariq the Dolphin

Sweet tidings beckon the arrival of my sweeter half like the first rays of dawn piercing through the dark cloudy enveloping.  First moorings are always a bit trickier when you are in an unfamiliar environment, far away from the home nest and steeper into the unknown. Ostensibly, like Lord Tennyson in Charge of the Light Brigade " there's not to reason why, but to do and die". The very initial days were grounded in a shared accommodation with another couple who also shared the same native background.However, the food arrangement remained dining in a nearby restaurant. Commute was hard, compounded by the punishing weather and the lack of personal transportation (apparently not possessing the country's driving license). Public transportation was abysmal, bus frequency low and shared private taxis off the route. Too much traveling back and froth to the city centre where the office was situated and businesses dispersed. Things started to unravel. Business concentration dip...

Ever wondered why those extra dollops keep popping up all over your torso? Oh my dear self, I have been eating so diligently, everything 'supposedly freshly prepared', straight from the food stall or restaurant kitchen, yet I do not find that shapely me that used to be cynosure of my and other eyes around me. The problem lies in the realisation of the mundane rather than a microscopic zeroing on the rarefied complexity. Many a times, we miss the simple ordinary for that exceptional extraordinary. Something, which was right under our eyes, yet we were circumnavigating the globe for it. Accurately, the same situation followed me on my wayback to Dubai where I had to earn a living, now I have another mouth to feed besides mine after culminating of my wedding.In this endeavour, I had to level the field for making our nest. Making the initial headway was tough, donning the mantle of a life insurance and savings personnel in an unfamiliar market. Straight out from an academics and an...

  Fortune  often takes a twisty turn. At one moment you are the ruler and emperor of your own ( sometimes with your clothes on) world, and zapped at the other end...you are just struggling to stretch your last dollar or pound sterling the farthest.  That's the ravages of cost of living and the extreme economy for someone who isn't an earning member, but a mere student, denied to even supplement the meagre take homes from part time work. The cost of denial for a supposedly gleaming future, proving too precarious tightrope walking in the immediate present. Unwittingly, the biggest toll is on health.You are denied any meal catering service, nor can you hire a ready help if cooking is not your forte or driven by the paucity of time.Fast prepared food is a fast recipe for an overload of preservatives, carbohydrates and fibreless wishy washy, consumed as convenience food. In fact, a recipe for disaster that begins to creep unconsciously in your otherwise sound system.  The...

Weighing up the question that keeps popping up in my half a century of existence, is why the weighty frame won't just melt away, leaving me fit and fine. My phases of weight loss, stabilisation and regain had often been drastic, to put it mildly. The weightier me just won't give up. I was condemned to a life of an overweight frame, if not outright obesity.  It first started with my early bodybuilding obsession, and I reached its climax, losing an entire 5 to 6 inches from my waist.Out came the chiseled jaw and a more muscular body line.Oh, those halcyon days of the late eighties! The glory, however, did last a mere few months.I could feel the oodles coming back with a vengeance.The flabby chin enveloping the once chiseled jaw, the trimmed waist loosening up, more flesh creeping up on my chest, belly and dorsal side.I could, simultaneously, feel my metabolism slowing down. Where once a sense of elation and athleticism emancipated all over my aesthetic frame, a resignation of fai...