Adnan Sami...Fat free :)

MUMBAI, Saturday, December 23, 2006

Fat free

has junked payas for soups. The singer has turned to good health by dealing with the many ghosts in his mind as well, discovers Sudipta Basu

Sudipta Basu

He breaks a clutch of crisp iceberg lettuce into a large bowl of blanched vegetables, tosses a fistful of black grapes and cubed green apples, drizzles a spray of fat-free dressing diluted with an ounce of skimmed milk… and pauses to consider the riot of colour facing him before taking the first spoonful. In many cultures saying a prayer before a meal is considered a ritual. For Adnan Sami consumption has been a ritual for many many years and pandering to his appetite akin to a prayer. Today as he spoons in the first bite with his puffy pink hands seated along the kitchen counter in his apartment in Four Bungalows, he whispers a silent prayer of gratitude on getting a second chance at life.

The 35-year-old singer came into fame with the popular hit Lift Karade some years ago. Its lyrics reflected the middle-class aspiration for monetary well-being. Sami did not know then that a few years hence he would murmur the ditty in solitude, hoping for a magic wand to touch him so that a fresh burst of life would be infused into him and he could step out of the darkness of self-imposed confinement and hold his ruddy face up against the sun.

At 210 kilos, as the world continued to think of him as an over-weight-but-cute and a hopelessly romantic singer, Sami worked himself into a condition where walking five feeble steps would leave him breathless.

He could not move without a walking stick, he hated travelling as two airplane seats could barely contain him and golf carts had to be pressed into service to cart him around airports; he would often need to be moved around in a wheelchair. He checked into the most opulent of presidential suites in European and Middle-eastern cities, but could not use the king-sized beds, as he was unable to lie on his back. He would be lucky if he managed to get two hours' uninterrupted sleep slouched on a sofa.

"While on a vacation in Dubai, I remember checking into a hotel suite and emerging from there only on the day of departure. I did not want to leave the hotel. I called in room service. I did not wish to see anyone. It was my version of the splendid isolation," says Sami, today 70 kilos younger.

He finishes his lunch and cups his hands around a mug of black coffee, and looks out onto the open patch of green through the window of his apartment. In the sunlight dappling through trees he sees refracted images from his distant and immediate past: one charged with the frenetic energy of youth and the other, a drift-wood.

The singer, once a rugby player, sporting a 30-inch waist, had since become a chronic depressive: the ghosts festering in his mind manifested on his body. As he says, "I stopped socialising. I was doing the bare minimum. I would finish my work at the studio and return home to my isolation. If I wanted to eat, I'd call for food. I'd reached the lowest point of my emotional self."

This is in sharp juxtaposition to the boy who was educated at Rugby Public School in England since the age of 10 (his parents lived in many cities in Europe, the Middle-east and America, and wished for their son to have a permanent residence through his school days). He went on to earn a degree in journalism from the University of London and studied law for a couple of semesters, till a keen interest in music overwhelmed his life.

His mother had earlier introduced him to instrumental music, particularly the piano, while his father passed over his fondness for old Hindi film music. While he trained in piano as a child (and was to later be anointed as the fastest fingers on the keyboard, to which his cheery refrain is: "what the hell was that, are we in the Olympics"?) he understood the distinctive styles of Naushad and Shankar Jaikishen's music.

In his formative years thereafter, RD and SD Burman, Vilayat Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Bhimsen Joshi became his idols. His friends in Rugby were curious. But since he was learning western classical and Jazz on the side, he fit into the gang very well, punk clothes and gelled hair in place. He was also the captain of the rugby team and a master at squash.

At the time he would put away six doughnuts after a good game. Over the years the love for food grew (as did his inclination toward music) but sports was no more part of his life.

He landed up in India while in his early twenties, to make a go at showbiz; he had been training with Pt Shiv Kumar Sharma over the years. His debut album Kabhi to nazar milao with no less a star than Asha Bhonsle was a hit. A few years before this, he met the '80s actress Zeba Bakhtiyar, who was shooting for a film in India. The two fell hopelessly in love, married, had a son—Azaan, who is now 12—divorced, and what seems today, at an incredibly early age of 23 pretty much had been through a gamut of mixed experiences.

Divorce took his son away from him, and as he says today "it seemed as if a warm blanket had been stripped away from me".
There were too many conflicting emotions to deal with and Sami sought refuge in food. He went to it, not a glutton but a gourmand. Which made things worse; for he was to begin to enjoy his trip victualling. His imagination ran riot with disparate cuisines. He recounts a typical worst but fulfilling Continental and Indian day by the kitchen table, with glee.

A typical continental day would begin with breakfast (at 10 am) with a stack of five pancakes dripping with butter and maple syrup, an omlette with Swiss cheese, some mushrooms cooked in butter, sausages and a banana nut muffin, all of it to be washed down with a cup of black coffee.

Lunch would be a whole roast duck, its skin glazed, with mashed potatoes. "I'd give dessert a miss, telling myself that it was my version of counting calories," he laughs. And dinner would be a quarter house steak, with Yorkshire pudding and scalped potatoes, or chicken in white cheese sauce, buttered rice and a tiramisu—"the last for the cemetery!" he says, before bursting into self-deprecating laughter.

"And if I wished to snack in between, I'd get a lasagna. The only healthy part of my diet was the many recipe books I'd read occasionally." An Indian worst day would start with puris—"countless; who wants to count and be ridiculous when you can eat and be frivolous"—with some chana and aachari aloo ki subzi, some squishy suji ka halwa with grated badam and a glass of thick lassi topped with rich malai. Or a large omlette with lachcha parathas, sasauges on the side.

Lunch would be nihari, paya and naans. Or a mutton biryani and raita, accompanied with fried lamb chops with masala and bread crumbs. The other option was some aloo gosht or saag gosht with white rice. Dinner would be a large platter of tikkas and kebabs or a biryani, ending with a bowl of kheer or some gulab jamun for dessert. If he wished to snack in between he'd mix up some malai with honey and sugar to go with some parathas.

"There were many bad Continental and Indian days through the week," he shares. The physical abuse stretched for over a decade, until after one of his overseas concerts last year, when he was to accompany his father for his annual medical check-up, his father insisted that he seek medical help. That was last July, in Texas, and the doctors gave him all of six months. He dismissed it of course, "being in denial", but at a quieter moment looked up to his father from the wheelchair and said that he had no regrets in life. "I was writing up my own epitaph," he says. The older Sami was determined to shake his son out of his sloth and stupor. "'You bloody well are going to fight out of this'," he told me.

"That was my wake-up call. I did not wish to seek medical help, scared of the outcome. And then the doctor confirmed my worst fears when he declared: 'I won't be surprised if in a year from now your family finds you dead in a hotel room'. I hated that doctor," he says.

"People don't realise that weight is a disease of the mind which has its repercussions on the body. It is very insensitive when they presume that nothing could be wrong with the victim. He is living it up king size; what issues could he be having. Not realizing that you are gnawing away inside: you eat because you are frustrated, and you are frustrated because you eat. It's a vicious circle."

Sami had been looking to heal for a long time. He wished to grab the bull by its horns, "but I did not know where the horns were". That was until last year. His knee had packed up as he had undergone an erroneous surgery for lymphodema, a problem with water retention, last year. Last July he left Mumbai in a wheelchair and upon arrival in Texas hooked up with a physiotherapist and a nutritionist. The first diktat laid out for him was to let go of his dependence on the walking stick. By now it had become his security blanket and it took him a while to let go of it.

Following this he was administered a strict diet by the nutritionist. What was his first reaction to the healthy way, after having abused himself with all the good food? "Tough, to say the least. But I was told that this was no temporary thing. It was an effort to change my life; and that is something I found very difficult to come to terms with."

He wasn't ready to hit the gym yet. Having lost the first few pounds he was advised to regain normalcy by simply walking around the house without any support. He experienced the first moment of victory when he could recline a little on the sofa and manage a few extra winks of sleep. That experience had been a luxury for him until recently.

"It was encouraging. But I was coming to terms with strange things—salads were in my life, I stopped cooking with butter; it was a sharp turn around for me as I believed that the best cooking in the world is done with butter and desi ghee," he reflects. "Now, instead of milk shakes, I'd reach for a crystal light lemonade."

He's been on the mend for nearly a year and a half. Cut to today: breakfast is a cup of tea with a bit of sugar and milk, followed by a glass of warm water and nimbu paani. Lunch is usually a salad, spiced up with a dash of pepper and Tabasco, with a slice of fat free cheese. And dinner a bowl of pulses, tomatoes, onions and cucumber. He is allowed egg white and grills and barbeques. And a snack between meals is a small bowl of popcorn.

"I sometimes laugh at myself. Is this really me? I used to scorn at people who ate salads. Over a period of time my body has stopped accepting non-vegetarian food. Today I feel nauseous at the thought of it."

It's a huge leap of faith for the singer. And he says with much pride that he is able to do "all the normal things". He went to a shopping mall in America after nine years. He hadn't been out grocery shopping in all that time either. Although he will continue to shop from special stores for a few years now and have his clothes custom-made, he revelled at the experience of meeting cheerful people at a public space. That clarity is a sign of optimism, especially when you have been used to seeing the world through dark glasses, seated in a wheelchair.

For the first time in 10 years since their divorce, he met his son Azaan and former wife Zeba (they live in Karachi) earlier this year. He'd spoken to them only a couple of times through these years. "Meeting my son was the biggest moment of my life, just as losing him was a major turning point. I am happy with the way he has been brought up—he looks like me and has a tremendous flair for music. His room is a mini music room," he says. "Zeba is an amazing mother. She has risen above the bitterness of our past, and today we have entered a comfort zone. We are friends and share the responsibility of parenting. I speak to my son everyday."

Looking back, Sami feels too much in his life happened too soon, and he was perhaps too young to shoulder responsibilities. "But I don't have any regrets. Everything happens for a reason, and I would not change anything in life." The film Back to the Future is a huge reference point for Sami where the protagonist goes into his past and seeks to change everything, to the extent of almost preventing his parents from meeting. Till he realises that he was threatening his own existence. "In order for today to come, I had to live through all my past experiences."

"I feel resurrected on a physical and emotional level," he says. "I am around people and do all the normal things that people do. I have always wished to own pets, but never got around to owning one. Today I have two dogs—Jazz and Rock. They are a bundle of joy. I have scratch marks all over myself; they are teething, but I don't care I am enjoying that."

Currently, Sami's energies are focused on his next album titled Kisi Din, which he says, has none of the painful strain ("often mistaken as romance") of his past work. It is about hope and optimism. A reflection of that is already up on the beige wall of his workstation: an oil canvas of a trim musician at a piano.

* He would check into the most opulent suites, but could not use the king-sized beds, as he was unable to lie on his back
* "Who wants to count and be ridiculous when you can eat and be frivolous"
* "People don't realise that weight is a disease of the mind. You eat because you are frustrated, and you are frustrated because you eat. It's a vicious circle"
* "I sometimes laugh at myself. Is this really me? I used to scorn at people who ate salads..."