My blood pressure numbers made me realise I had to do something drastic such as cutting down on my favourite foods — cheesecake, shawarma and mutton biryani.

“Let’s see if we can manage your BP without medication,” said the doctor, kindly looking at my worried face.

“No pappadam [a crisp, thin tortilla made of lentin, fried or roasted, and with a whopping 72 per cent sodium content], no pickles or salt,” he said.

Go to any Indian restaurant in Dubai and the first thing the waiter brings to the table are little bowls of pickles swimming in oil. These are tiny pieces of lemon or mango or shrimp, soaked in salt, sugar and oil.

You dip your pappadam in the pickle and enjoy these starters while inhaling the aroma of buttered naan (leavened, flatbread) emanating out of the kitchen.

If you have what is called as hypertension, or are a diabetic, or you are someone suffering from high acidity and gastritis, or you are obese, pickles will definitely shoot your systolic number through the roof. They will make your triglycerides happy because of the high oil content or make you desperately reach for a bottle of Gaviscon.

I nodded my head solemnly, agreeing that I would keep away from these foods, not letting him know that my other favourite is something called ‘mixture’, an Indian savoury dish made of fried lentils, peanuts, chickpea flour noodles, corn, vegetable oil, flaked rice, fried onion and curry leaves, and which is crunchy, mouth-watering. I eat bowls of this stuff while surfing the web.

But seriously, something had to be done as all the numbers were going crazy. Cholesterol for instance was way over 200 mg/dl (milligrams per decilitre), when it should be 170 mg/dl.

A couple of years ago, my colleague and I laughed as we were driving to work and saw scores of men and women jogging on the bouncy walkway around Al Safa Park, red-faced and straining in their tight, uncomfortable running outfits.

“Don’t they know they will be dead eventually,” said my colleague, smirking and taking a puff from his cigarette.

Then I read some wisecracking Hollywood actor’s quote, “If you wish to leave a good-looking corpse, die young.”

Bad jokes aside, I decided to get my life back on track and next morning I sat on my breakfast table with a garlic pod, a cinnamon stick, a jar of honey, an apple, a banana and walnuts, Greek yoghurt (that has been strained to remove its whey) and a bowl of gob, that disgusting stuff called oats porridge.

My maid stopped vacuuming and making a racket around the table, looked at my breakfast stuff and asked me if I was making something. When I told her about my numbers, she said she would make beetroot juice for me in our smoothie machine called the Ninja Bullet.

Earlier, I had gone shopping at an organic store and the atmosphere was hushed. People were picking up cartons of stuff and instead of tossing them in a trolley, they were reading the content labels carefully. It was like a library of foodstuffs.

When I read the contents list on a bag of crisps, I noticed it had a whopping dose of salt. “How can this be healthy?” I whispered to my wife.

“The potatoes are grown organically, without pesticides,” she said.

“It says this chicken was bred free-range, does it mean it was allowed to run around and eat all sorts of stuff, without supervision?” I asked.

“Yes, and they do not inject it with steroids and antibiotics,” said my wife, as we looked at a scrawny chicken that would make a sorry-looking chicken tikka masala.

When I eventual returned to see the doctor, he looked at the BP machine and prescribed a pill that was in the shape of a tiny heart. That made me feel warm, loved and ... hungry.