Naresh Kumar was a man afraid of death, hospitals, injections, intravenous tubing, and the sight of blood. He was mortally scared of Alzheimer's, Botulism, Cataract (or any kind of fall), Diphtheria, and every other ailment right down to Zyzymia -- the buzzing in the ears that persisted long after his son had switched off 4000 stereo-watts worth of cacophony that went by the name of heavy metal rock music.

Naresh Kumar was pushing forty-five. As a software programmer in a deadline-driven computer firm, he was pushing rather hard. How hard, he learnt when he awoke one morning and found he could not get off the bed. His mouth dry with panic, Naresh croaked for help.

“Sarala! Sarala!”

At the third call his plump nightie-clad wife entered the bedroom, her outstretched palms preceding her. She had been painting her fingernails.

“I can't get up!” bleated Naresh.

“You don't have to,” his wife replied equably. “It's Sunday.”

“Don't you understand? I can't move! Give me a hand!”

She did, and he swung to a sitting position. Was he having a paralytic attack?

Naresh burst into a cold sweat. His sphincter threatened to give way.

“I'll get you some tea,” said Sarala, blowing on her gaudy nails as she left the room.

To his intense relief, the warmth of circulating blood arrived upon Naresh Kumar along with the tea. He ran his fingers lightly over the soles of his feet. Numb, but not entirely insensitive -- that would be Sarala! He held out his hands. They seemed to quiver, ever so slightly. “I must see a doctor right away,” said Naresh.

“Cholesterol too high,” observed Dr. Sinha, looking up benignly and tapping his temple with the tongue depressant that had till recently explored Naresh Kumar's gullet. Naresh avoided the doctor's eye and instead gazed at the lab report lying on the table-top, trying to make sense of the neat set of numbers that laid bare the state of his nerves and arteries, his air tubes and food pipes -- blocks, constrictions, warts and all.

“Nothing to worry, just watch your diet,” advised Dr. Sinha. “And here's a prescription. These tablets should last you a month. The medical shop is just across the street.”

Naresh Kumar promptly forswore many of his favorite foods: Aavakai, Biryani, Cream Cheese … and so on down the alphabet.

He cut down on salt (switching to potassium chloride to be doubly safe).

He gave up sugar (white poison!).

He began to count calories, ingest measured quantities of food, and maintain complicated charts on his computer.

“Cholesterol comes in two kinds – good and bad,” said Dr. Sinha a month later. “Your good cholesterol is fine, but the bad cholesterol…” He shook his head. “I recommend further diet restrictions, along with regular exercise. Meanwhile, here's your prescription. The medical shop is just across the street.”

Naresh Kumar went to work on bad cholesterol reduction with manic resolve. He replaced rice with oats, and ghee with olive oil. He devoured health books like a hungry baby at its mother's teat. He trawled the Internet for cholesterol-related websites. He walked to work every morning, thus exercising for the first time muscles uninvolved in mouse and keyboard operations.

“How do I look?” asked Naresh of his wife one morning, flexing a non-existent bicep. Sarala took in the blotch of unwiped shaving cream on her husband's jaw, the tuft of armpit hair airing itself through his holed vest, and shuddered. Naresh re-inspected his bicep, and frowned. More exercise was indicated.

That evening he enlisted at the local gym. He lifted weights. He went on the treadmill. He took to skipping with a vengeance.

Sarala took to frequent snacking and prayer.

“It's not just the cholesterol, you know, it's also your triglyceride count,” said Dr. Sinha as he scanned the latest report. “I know you're being careful, doing all the right things.” He pursed his lips. “Now, meditation …that really helps. Focus on your inner being. Will yourself to wellness, as they say.”

From the medical shop across the street, Naresh Kumar emerged with a bowlful of multicoloured pills.

Master Naresh decided he would listen to Guns n' Roses just about the time his father was settling down for meditation.

“Will you *@#$%* stop that?” bellowed Naresh. His son busied himself with the controls of the music system, pretending not to hear.

Naresh Kumar came up from behind and positioned himself fore and aft, like a golfer preparing to putt, but it was football he had in mind. It was a fine kick, the kind Beckham would have approved of, with just the right force and just the right amount of loft. It caught Master Naresh on the cleft of his young bottom, and he crashed into his speakers.

When he disentangled himself from the plugs and wires and rose to his feet, Master Naresh was one surprised teenager. His father's fight against cholesterol was beginning to affect his brain!

Naresh Kumar squatted on the mat, closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and proceeded to focus on his inner being.

At about this time, Sarala's brother came down from the United States to spend his vacation in India. He was a successful physician, an unrivalled practitioner of the art of defensive medicine, which consisted of prescribing every possible test and scan for any symptom that went beyond that of the common cold. For Naresh, his brother-in-law's word was gospel.

“This cholesterol thing is a lot of humbug,” declared Brother-in-law when Naresh showed him the numbers. “Played up by the pharma companies and helped along by the media. Yesterday, coffee was poison. Today, coffee is supposed to prevent heart attacks! Alcohol was once a no-no. Today, they say a couple of pegs can be good for you! It all depends which lobby funds the research!”

Naresh Kumar wasn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed by these pronouncements. In truth he felt cheated out of his personal quest for perfect health, the Holy Grail of freedom from disease and hospitalization. He looked sourly at the skipping rope on the shelf, at the weighing machine in the corner, then at his brother-in-law.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you can do all the dieting and exercising you want, and your cholesterol can still be off the scale!”

“So?”

“It's all in the genes, man,” said B-in-law with the authority stemming from decades of malpractice insurance payments. “If your parents had high cholesterol, then it's ditto for you too. But then, who knows, tomorrow they'll discover that cholesterol improves your programming ability, or your sex drive, or some such.” He winked broadly.

Naresh was overjoyed. “Are you saying cholesterol can be a good thing?”

B-in-law put up a warning finger. “All I am saying is, no one knows for sure.” He pulled out from his pocket a squishy bar of Swiss chocolate (fourteen hundred calories!) and sunk his teeth into it. “Cholesterol, here I come!”

Naresh felt like Sisyphus unburdened of the boulder that weighed upon his back. For he knew his genes had an impeccable lineage.

His grandfather had been healthy as a temple bull. He had met his end while shovelling fresh cow dung into a wheelbarrow. He had been smoking a beedi at the time. An explosion blew him to bits; nobody then knew the cause. Now, of course, there was an explanation; the lighted beedi had ignited the methane gas released from the cow dung, and…boom! It was a funny accident, were it not so tragic.

His father too had been a strong virile man. He met his end one night when a truck accidentally ran over a bottle of arrack. It was an unfortunate coincidence that the bottle happened to be in his father's pocket.

Both Naresh Kumar's mother and grandmother were still alive. Cholesterol, high or low, good or bad, hadn't laid a finger on any of them. He was safe.

“Did you hear that, Sarala?” he exclaimed, chortling with delight. “It's all in the genes! Bloody Indian doctors! Stuffing me with pills like poultry feed!” He jumped to his feet and stepped onto the balcony. He reached out for his jeans hanging on the clothesline. “Brother, I'll be back in a minute.”

“Hey, where are you off to?”

“I'm going to get ourselves a pizza! A large pizza with double cheese topping!” replied Naresh, beaming at the others in the room while reaching further out to whisk his jeans off its perch. His center of gravity tilted a bit too far over the balcony railing; the marble flooring didn't help any.

Naresh Kumar tumbled over, screaming and flailing as he went down six stories.

“Accident-prone genes …” muttered his brother-in-law as he looked down at the body on the pavement. “Now, who would have imagined that?”