Last year, a friend showed up unexpectedly at my place.
"Did you know? There's a new gym in town. I think you should join it." he panted.
"Why?" I retorted, disgruntled. We environment-friendly chaps are known for our strong views on unnecessary expenditure of energy, especially on extreme physical activities.
"You could do with losing some weight. And guess what? The gym instructor is a female. And she's supposed to be really good looking!" he gushed.
That opened a new line of thought. No; not the fact about the good looking gym instructor. It takes more than the allure of a full-figured femme fatale to initiate us staunchly inert ones into a muscle building scheme. What made me consider the proposal was the fact that the Wife had since recent times, been dropping subtle, tactful hints about my widening waistline in a way only a diplomatic, sensitive wife can (e.g. "you look pregnant with twins!", "I bet you can't see your toes!" etc.)
I decided to take up the challenge.
History has always witnessed great men making crucial decisions impulsively and on the spur of the moment. And often not without regret. As I made my way towards the gym in shorts and T-shirt, tightly clutching a bottle of water, I realized I was about to join those very same great men.
Some consolation.
The beginning was acceptable enough. I was welcomed by the gym instructor, a genial personality with a figure like the Barbie doll. She showed me around the gym which had all sorts of complex equipment more resembling that seen in a hardware & tool factory. The thought that I was to be subjected to all those devices gave me the shudders. I clutched the water bottle even more tightly. With a nervous laugh, I pointed out to her that doing all those exercises would be as bad as dying a dog's death.
On that count, I was totally wrong.
It was much worse!
Whether it was seeing the readout of my weight on her weighing scale that inspired her, I do not know, or whether it was as a concession to her general attitude, but the next one hour was devoted by her in an enthusiastic and concentrated effort to try and fuse all my abdominal and thoracic viscera into one composite mass AND separate every muscle in my body from its parent attachments; all in the name of exercise!
The word 'rest' seemed to be unknown to her and it pained me to think that an elegant girl, with so much finesse can suddenly metamorphose into the slave driver of the Roman era who used to whip the slaves working the oars on their ships.
The first session left me battered, bruised and wondering if I should return home or go straight to the hospital. Dr MorePain (as I had dubbed her) told me however that I had done pretty well.
The next few days were repeat performances of the first day. My gym instructor's good looks went largely unappreciated by me, a view concurred to by my other male inmates. You see, it's kind of hard to focus on the female form, when one is gasping for breath, trying to lift billions of kilos of iron weights off one's chest and limbs.
All those visions of gymnasium scenes like those seen in Baywatch, where attractive men and women comfortably exercise away while engaging in pleasant chitchat, were dashed to the ground.
My inspiring motto of ‘Gym, Pori, Gym’ (in marathi) turned to ‘Gym, Pori, Gym, KAPALACHA GYM!
I will not burden you any further with the gory details, but it'd suffice to say that I huffed and puffed for the next 1 month and Lo and Behold! I developed a body like Hrithik Roshan and six-packs like Shah Rukh Khan.
No, I just made that up. But now at least my body can be ascribed a shape and I can look in the mirror without flinching.
The tragic end to the story is that the Gym-Instructor got a modeling assignment in Mumbai. The Gym shut down and I have returned to my previous generous proportions. And that’s the morbid part of this Gym Story…
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