Friends and family often ask us whether we’re waddling advertisements for the laughing Buddha, you know the one with the swollen belly. 

You see, like most Indians we relish our Malai Kofta, Navaratan Korma, Chicken Chettinad, Idli, Vada, Gojju, Masala Dosa and those delectable desi sweets like Jangir, Doodhi Halwa, Kesar Peda, Badam Halwa, Haigreeva et al.

From San Diego on the Mexican border to Niagara on the Canadian border, we must have dined at over 150 Indian restaurants in the U.S. Such is our insatiable lust for those fiery Indian curries and non pareil sweets.

Telling us to eat less Indian food is like telling that Bollywood duffer Abhishek Bachchan or Tamil film star Ajith to learn acting – the advice falls on deaf ears.

But now help could be at hand for us in the form of a new medical technique that staples the stomach (yes, you read it right the first time. No typo here. It literally staples your stomach).

The New York Times recently had an interesting piece on this new technique of weight-loss surgery.

Here’s an excerpt from the NYT piece on the stapling-surgery on one patient, Karleen Perez:

The surgeons, Dr. Marc Bessler and Dr. Daniel Davis, had just stapled her stomach to form a thumb-sized tube that would hold only a small amount of food. The operation resembled others done for weight loss, with one huge difference. In Ms. Perez’s case, there was no cutting. Instead, the surgeons had passed the stapler down her throat and stapled her stomach from the inside.

Inspecting their handiwork, Dr. Bessler said, “I don’t think you’ll get much better than that.”

The operation, meant to make people feel full after eating very little, is strictly experimental. Only a few patients have tried it in this country, as part of a study paid for by Satiety Inc., which makes the staplers and hopes the Food and Drug Administration will approve them.