Smoothie madness

 

 

There was a time when I was completely, unapologetically obsessed with my green smoothie. Not the trendy Instagram kind with açaí and granola on top no, this was a serious, no-nonsense concoction prescribed by Dr. Pramod Tripathi, a famous diabetologist from Pune. I was drinking it twice a day, at 6 am and 6 pm, with the kind of discipline I had never applied to anything else in my life, including sleep.

In my second year of the diet, work threw a curveball I had to travel to the USA for two weeks. Now, a normal person would have said, "Two weeks, cheat a little, it's fine." Not me.

The smoothie had almost tropical ingredients: cinnamon powder, pepper, salt, half an apple, betel leaf, big spinach leaves, and small leaves like cilantro, mint, or curry. Not exactly the kind of thing you'd find at an airport café. I needed a blender, and I needed a plan.

Turns out, all the ingredients were available in the US America, land of the free and apparently also land of betel leaves. I ordered a $20 blender to a Walmart store and picked it up the moment I landed in Boston, like a man on a mission. The math was already done mid-flight: 14 days, 28 smoothies, roughly 70 cents a smoothie. I was basically running a budget airline for my gut.

And then a delightful surprise. The blender came with a flask. A proper, carry-on bottle. The universe approved of my madness.

I had carried my spices from home, because buying them in American sizes would have left me with enough cinnamon to last until 2035. Every three days, I picked up fresh ingredients and made my smoothie in the morning like a perfectly functioning adult. Each serving was a dignified 250–300 ml, or about 10 fl oz just enough to feel virtuous without gagging.

At the end of the trip, I thought I'd leave the blender with my friend a no-nonsense parting gift. My friend, however, was not moved. "It'll just sit in a corner," they said, with the honesty only a good friend can get away with. Fair point. Taking it back to India wasn't an option either, since it ran on 120V and India runs on 220V,  a difference that would have turned my smoothie maker into a small fireworks display.

It was one of my most memorable trips two weeks in the US, not a single cheat, smoothie twice a day, every day. I carried that streak through the following year and straight through COVID, when the rest of the world was stress-baking banana bread and I was still blending betel leaves at 6 am.

Three years later, the blender finally gave up. It had done its job, served its time, and earned its retirement. It went straight to recycling a hero's farewell for a $20 legend.