5 Indian Short Stories Vol.2

The Foodie Lawyer

Manish Sharma was a lawyer with no clients. It had been 3 months since he got his degree and yet he couldn't attract any clients. He was well versed in law but wasn't the most charismatic personality to attract clients like his batchmates.

Now he finally had enough and wanted his own clients and cases somehow. Due to no work, he stress ate and developed a tummy for which his mother constantly told him to jog otherwise his chances of getting married were getting slim.

"First no work and now my body", thought Manish wondering whats next. He opened a pack of potato chips and ate with one hand while reading the newspaper held in his left hand.

"Corruption,politics,income tax nothing new today also",said Manish.He noticed his bag of chips was over so he went to the kitchen and searched all the shelves for food. There was none to be found, either there were no snacks or his mother hid them very well for his weight loss. Exasperated he took an egg and cracked it over a stove, he planned on making a paneer egg roll with some leftover paneer from yesterday.

His father Rajat Sharma a bald man in his fifties had already advised him several times to take hotel management instead of law as he was into food and cooked well. But Manish was interested in law at the time.

He finished making his paneer egg roll and ate it at the table while scrolling on his phone checking his email for any job offers. He didn't find any, so he put the phone away and ate his roll in silence.

After the meal, he paced around a bit in his room and was thinking of any ideas. He wasn't exactly the brightest student he'll admit, ever since school days he was good at only English and biology. The rest of his performance was mediocre. After that in college, he took physics chemistry maths and biology as his core subjects which he just scraped by, except biology and chemistry it was very easy for him for some reason.

Then he took up law because it seemed like a lucrative career and it interested him. Law school was tough but Manish managed to get a degree at the end along with an internship in another state.

"No point in regretting now ", thought Manish tiredly. He went and took a nap which lasted for over an hour and would have continued so had his phone not rung.

He woke up groggily and saw it was his friend Rajat calling him. Reluctantly he answered, "Hello"

"Hello Bhai how are you?", asked Rajat.

"Struggling", replied Manish.

"It's ok you'll get a job soon too", reassured Rajat.

"Easy for you to say since you have one", thought Manish.

"By the way, I called to tell you to come to Ahmed's chai house"

"Why what's the occasion?"

"Nothing just wanted to meet you "

Manish thought for a moment, it was not like he was busy anyway so he accepted the offer, "Ok I'll come to see you at 5 there".

Somehow at 5 Manish managed to drag himself to Ahmed's Chai house which was a famous spot in his locality to hang out, chat and drink tea with some snacks. They were about to add a bakery next he heard.

As soon as Manish arrived he spotted Rajat and the two of them ordered 2 tea.

Along with sipping tea, they discussed some other stuff. Rajat spoke of how he was planning to shift his house and that his mother was forcing him to get married even though he didn't want to.

"A lot of weird things are happening with me. My office equipment turns faulty, my scooter broke down twice last week and my aunt sued a washing machine company".

The last one caught Manish's attention, "Your aunt sued a washing machine company?" he asked again he wasn't sure whether he heard that right.

"yes you heard it right, apparently she purchased a new washing machine from a company and after a few days, it wasn't functioning properly. So she sued them and won the case", he explained.

'' Oh ok carry on"

After that Rajat talked to Manish for a few more minutes and left due to some office work.

Manish headed back to his house and once again sat inside his bedroom. He looked at the mirror and saw his reflection, he had certainly grown fat, he measured his weight and found that he had gained 14 Kgs which made him look chubby.

He didn't understand how he could have gained o much weight, sure he was stress eating but he wasn't stressed eating enough to gain 14 kgs in such a short amount of time. He felt something was wrong and fished out the potato chips packet from his dustbin and read the back contents which said fat was only 2%. But Manish felt t was a lie, so he decided to investigate.

He was very skilled at biology and food sciences so he quickly went to the market bought another chips packet and experimented on one of the chips to find the fat was about 5% and it wasn't just one or two chips like that he tested the whole packet. His guess was that the entire shelf of chips packets had extra fat.

"Thank god for those extra after-hour classes by Ms Sushmita", thought Manish.

A little context here. Ms Sushmita was an old biology teacher of his 11th and 12th grades. She was a very knowledgeable person that had many Phd's and she took notice of Manish's amazing understanding of biology and chemistry. She knew he had a knack for those subjects, so she would teach him a lot of extra topics, make him perform lab experiments and would lend him some of her books. Manish didn't really mind and just went with it as the subjects interested him and he was enjoying the whole learning process.

Now in the present, his ability to analyse things chemically and biologically had come in handy. He felt he should do something about it. He suddenly remembered Rajat's aunt's washing machine story and got an idea.

In the next few days, he was preparing documents and bought a new dress for his court appearance as the old one fitted him tightly and launched a case against the company Meghana Potato Chips.

He presented his case in front of the court of how they gave false information and were upsetting the diet of many food conscious people. With substantial proof he won the case with 50000 rupees and Meghana foods was to be investigated.

This victory gave him a push to do further and soon one by one all the products and snacks in the supermarket were critiqued by him and he lodged cases against the ones that were violating food regulations.

"Your honour Aman Ice creams are using 23% sugar which is harmful and not 15 % as they say"

"Your honour Swan shampoos are lying about being the best shampoo for hair, instead they have caused hair fall to my client Mr Tripathi and he is supposed to get married next month"

"Your Honor the expiry date on Jake Jam biscuits is written 2 months extra of that of the real expiration date"

"Your Honor Carlson Cereals are not issuing a laser toy along with their cereal for free like promised, thus conning even kids "

"Your honour Shweta honey is adultered and not pure "

"Your honour Gora skin cream made a false promise of making a person's skin white in 20 days. My client Mr Himesh has been trying for 3 months now dedicatedly and hasn't seen any result. This isn't fair to him"

"Your honour Graham toothpaste does not use the walnuts along with salt for deep cleaning a person's teeth but some artificial flavour instead"

Like this Manish became famous as the foodie lawyer as he started examining and critiquing foods originally. He soon became a popular consumer rights lawyer by winning one case at a time, later he started to focus on his own health by reducing weight and getting back in shape.

He now has a Tv show where he reviews all types of consumer products in the supermarket on national television and would provide his honest feedback. Thus he became a celebrity of sorts.

Everyone is good at something says Manish and you should hone those talents in the best way possible.