Chandigarh: Every major Indian city has a social type that comes to define it: New Delhi has its politicians and power brokers, Mumbai its financiers, Bengaluru its hi-tech entrepreneurs, and Kolkata its aristocratic bhadralok.But Chandigarh, the self-styled City Beautiful, stands out in a different register altogether. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6) for 2023–24, it has the highest proportion of overweight and obese men in the country, 48.5% of its male population.In this context, its evolving urban character has, in tongue-in-cheek local shorthand, given rise to an altogether more substantial counterpart: His Heavinesses – or HHs – a playful label for this visibly expanding legion of men whose crowns may be metaphorical but whose physical presence remains unmistakably evident across the city.Over the weekend, the NFHS revealed that the number of obese adults in the city has risen sharply from 34.4% in the 2019–21 survey, well above the national average of 27.3%. In fact, Chandigarh’s HHs leave neighbouring Punjab’s men trailing by around 11 percentage points, despite the state itself topping the northern region on the male obesity scale at 37.5% and ranking eighth nationally. This entirely tongue-in-cheek unofficial “HH” hierarchy, defined not by lineage, wealth or achievement but by circumference, sits within a Punjabi food culture, where hospitality is measured in second and third helpings, and dieting is treated as a lapse in judgment. Restraint in eating is often viewed here with suspicion as well, blurring the line between indulgence and expanding waistlines.Correspondingly, Chandigarh’s female counterparts are not far behind these ‘HHs’. At 41.9%, the proportion of women classified as overweight or obese has edged down slightly from 44% in the previous NFHS, placing them seventh nationally. Even so, city women remain well above the national female obesity average of 30.7%, which is topped by women in Puducherry, followed by Kerala.But even more concerning is the NFHS finding that obesity is increasingly taking hold among Chandigarh’s children, under the age of five years. Their proportion classified as obese has more than doubled in recent years, rising from 1.8% to 4.1% presently and highlighting the growing entrenchment of lifestyle-related health risks from an early age.Also read: Missing Indicators in NFHS-6 Shield Two Modi Govt Flagship Schemes From ScrutinyAlongside this, obesity statistics for Punjab – whose capital Chandigarh is shared with neighbouring Haryana – are equally concerning, with 37.5% of men and 44.7% of women classified as such, and a higher prevalence in urban than rural areas. These rates exceed those in neighbouring Haryana (37.3%) and Himachal Pradesh (38.2%), and sit far above the national average of 27.3%.These statistics may be alarming, but they are not entirely mysterious.In Chandigarh, and across much of Punjab, food is rarely a matter of simple sustenance. It is a social obligation, a measure of hospitality and, on occasion, a competitive exercise in generosity. Plates are generally refilled with remarkable efficiency, and anyone claiming to have eaten enough is often met with polite disbelief. Hosts tend to regard an empty plate as a problem requiring immediate attention, while guests who decline additional helpings frequently find themselves subjected to a determined campaign of persuasion and, at times, forced feeding.Under such conditions, the majority of midriffs rarely stand much of a chance.Medical and nutrition experts view this worrying rise in obesity across Chandigarh and Punjab as a convergence of dietary, behavioural, and lifestyle shifts that have gradually, but certainly, reshaped people’s everyday eating habits. They highlight a clear shift in food consumption patterns, with traditional diets increasingly displaced by calorie-dense processed foods. Changing social habits and technology had also accelerated the trend; earlier generations had to make a conscious effort to gain weight by venturing out in search of food; today, an entire banquet can arrive at anyone’s front door within minutes, via a mobile telephone app.“People are increasingly shifting towards processed and ready-to-eat foods that are high in calories but low in nutritional value,” Dr RPS Sibia, Director-Principal of Government Medical College and Rajindra Hospital, Patiala, told the Hindustan Times on Tuesday. “There is also a growing culture of eating out, where food is often prepared using unhealthy oils, Sibia stated, adding that physical inactivity, poor sleep patterns and chronic stress were also contributing significantly to widespread weight gain.Dr Ijyaa Singh of ReAct Asia Pacific, a public health advocacy network, echoed these concerns, linking rising obesity rates to the growing consumption to not only ultra-processed foods, but also to aping westernised eating habits and to widespread advertising. She also told Hindustan Times that reversing this trend would require “strong societal action, including healthy lifestyle education in schools, mandatory nutritional labelling on packaged foods, and a shift towards traditional, nutritious diets based on millets and seasonal vegetables.”Such warnings are especially relevant for Chandigarh’s ‘HHs’, who inhabit a city conceived not as a monument to excess, but as a model of order, balance and modern living, and certainly not as a case study in expanding waistlines, as it has become. Designed by the celebrated Swiss-French architect and urban planner Le Corbusier, the City Beautiful offers near-perfect conditions for healthy living: broad tree-lined avenues, abundant green spaces, parks, forested areas, cycle tracks and the scenic expanse of Sukhna Lake, amongst many other beneficial amenities.A Peepal heritage tree on the bank of Sukhna Lake in Chandigarh. Photo: Harvinder Chandigarh, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.Few Indian cities are better designed for walking, jogging, cycling, or simply spending time outdoors. Yet Chandigarh is also ideally engineered for indulgence, and the same parks that host fitness routines at dawn and in the evenings, adjoin sumptuous eateries that invariably end up completely undoing them. These offer an endless fare of butter chicken, chole bhature, samosas, kulfi, mithai and other fattening temptations that sit just within reach of a post-walk lapse in restraint. Many of the city’s markets are little more than open-air eateries in disguise, and snacking becomes the default activity rather than an occasional indulgence, amply reflected in the NFHS data.Beyond dietary and lifestyle shifts, Chandigarh’s consumption culture extends well beyond food. The city does not merely drink – it does so with notable intensity, recording per capita alcohol consumption nearly 6.5 times the national average, a pattern that sits comfortably within its broader culture of indulgence. In local social shorthand, this excess is often half-jokingly captured in the evocative “egg, leg, and peg” classification – the egg for ballast, the chicken leg for confidence, and the peg for momentum.Official data compiled by the Confederation of Indian Alcoholic Beverage Companies (CIABC) recently indicated that Chandigarh’s roughly 12.5 lakh residents consumed about 23.02 lakh cases of liquor in 2024–25, spanning country liquor, Indian-made foreign liquor, and imported spirits – translating to roughly 1.84 cases, or about 22 bottles per person annually. Over a five-year period, from 2021 to January 2026, total sales crossed 13.21 crore bottles, averaging more than eight bottles per capita each year.Scores of liquor outlets across Chandigarh with evocative names like Bottle Room, Drinks & Co and Once upon a bottle have evolved into expansive, brightly lit retail spaces, resembling airport duty-free stores, more than just traditional booze shops.On weekends and festival days, these outlets become crowded social arenas; vehicles double-park outside while inside, customers move through aisles with the urgency of competitive sport. Choices are debated in detail – brand, strength, smoothness, price – before inevitably narrowing down to a simpler question: how much is enough for the evening?Seen against this backdrop, the NFHS figures for Chandigarh’s ‘HHs’ are less a surprise than a quiet confirmation of what is already visible in everyday life. What the survey records in percentages is, in effect, an accretion now impossible to ignore – officially obesity, but locally spoken of with a bluntness the statistics avoid: His Heavinesses.