New Year's resolution contd...

As I had mentioned in my first blog that I will write another blog about one of my other new year resolution that I took only to break it the very next year by taking a resolution to break the same, here I am to write about it. I think I took this resolution in 2004 only to take the opposite of this resolution the next year (2005) i.e., to break it.

Ever since my college days I have been drinking Coke and over the years I started liking it a lot. The reason I probably started liking Coke in the first place is because my dad likes Coke a lot and I probably picked it up from him. In India we used to get Coke, I believe, in 300ml bottles. This was too much for my dad to drink as part of his dinner and most of the time, if not all of the time, he and I used to end up sharing the Coke bottle, half-and-half. This was the case until 1997 when I moved out to Bombay for work.

In Bombay, I was away from home for the first time in my life and whenever I used to drink Coke I used to think of sharing Coke with my father and realized that 300ml of Coke is too much for any one person to finish at one time. Trust me, I drank my first full bottle of Coke in Bombay...!!! In 1998, as part of my work I had to travel to USA, the land of opportunities, for the very first time. It was here that I first saw Coke being sooo popular that it was being treated as equivalent to water. Having soda with meals was common in US as compared to India. During my 6 months stay in the US I also slowly started getting used to having soda with my meals.

Subsequently after returning back to India I again started having water with my meals rather than Coke. But I still liked Coke and continued having Coke whenever I felt like. After that I worked in different cities within India and made 2 more trips to the US (2000, 2002) as part of my job. After my trip to the US in 2000, I felt that I am having more Coke than I normally have but still did not feel anything bad about it as there was not much of a negative campaign going on for Coke back then. Coke had become quiet popular by then in India and the ad campaigns for Coke and Pepsi were all around the country.

But after my 2002 trip to the US I started having Coke with my meals instead of water, that was an alarming change in me, even for me. I, by default, went for Coke with my meals instead of water. My friends used to make fun of me. I realized that its not good that I am having more Coke than I normally have and I am not doing any good to my health by that, after all it is a carbonated drink that is not good for health. Even when I went to the UK in 2002-2003 for a year as a student I could not resist myself when it came to drinking Coke.

Somewhere in the middle of 2003 (Jul/Aug), I remember that there was a finding in India that Coke was using pesticides as one of the ingredients in its drink. This led to a lot of negative publicity for the drink and lot of non-profit organizations and political parties called for a ban on Coke. I came back to India, from UK, in Oct 2003 when this scandal was at its peak. I really did not pay much attention to the scandal and was going about as normal as ever about drinking Coke. But I questioned myself, what if its true that Coke does contain pesticides. In that case, the amount of coke that I drink is definitely not good considering the amount of pesticides that might be getting into my system.So towards the end of 2003 I started thinking about reducing my intake of Coke.

As it was end of the year, it was normal for people to ask what is your New Year Resolution?. Since I have not really take any resolution ever since my childhood, apart from the one resolution that I wrote about, I decided to make my 2004 New Year Resolution as "Quit Coke". Yes, I decided to stop drinking Coke once and for all and wanted to test and see how much I can control myself when it came to drinking Coke given my craving for Coke.

Not bad that I was able to control it for a year. Yes, really I did not drink a single Coke during the entire year of 2004. Yeahhhhhh...!!!

In June 2004 I got married and said to my wife about this resolution that I had taken to "Quit Coke", for good, she was like... hhhmmm... let's see how long you can keep it up. Slowly, she made me realize that Coke is bad for health when you have too much of it and that it is ok to have it once in a while. It is like to say too much of anything is not good. But still me being me was adamant about sticking to my resolution. But over the course of rest of 2004, I felt that may be I am being too harsh to myself by not having even a single Coke.

By that time it was towards the end of 2004 and as usual people started asking what is your New Year Resolution?. Since, I had successfully controlled myself by not having even a single Coke through out 2004 and got rid of the bad craving that I had for Coke I convinced myself that it is ok to have Coke once in a while rather than to just quit for ever. So I decided that my 2005 New Year Resolution would be to break my 2004 New Year Resolution i.e., to start drinking Coke again but only once in a while. I still agree that Coke is definitely not good for health and I totally understand the feeling of people who are still against Coke or any other carbonated drinks but, for me, little bit of it does less damage than more of it... :)

So this is my story of taking a resolution only to take another resolution the following year to break the original one. See ya later... POP... (Sound of opening a Coke can...!!! :) )