Gym

It was all around me – gorgeous young women with impossible figures in little black dresses, screaming for attention from the back cover of magazines and newspapers, tempting me to join the slimming centre that has made them so confident and beautiful. Next to the sexy woman’s picture is usually a picture of a middle aged ugly woman in salwar kameez who appears to have lost the will to live. Read the copy and you realise the two women are the same, the one in salwar kameez taken 6 months earlier. What in heaven’s name happens inside those slimming clinics? After sucking out the fat, do they also replace body parts by putting you through a machine? I was too afraid to find out. I once went as far as taking an appointment at one of these clinics, but that was about as far as I got.
If miracle clinics were not your thing, you could choose from slimming pills, aerobic sessions, Pilates classes, Kick-boxing, tai-chi, Power yoga, Iyengar yoga, Bikram yoga, your retired neighbour’s home-made yoga, or the friendly gym across the street, which promises 20 kilos or 20% off in an improbable six months. Seemed like a win-win situation. If you didn’t lose weight you at least had the satisfaction of getting some money back. Basically there was no escaping the slimming mania that has gripped the nation. If you can’t beat them, you just join them.
I had always considered myself genetically blessed with a good body and efficient metabolism. But two kids and arriving on the wrong side of the 30s proved me wrong. This is how I came to join forces with the battle against the bulge. I enrolled at this swanky new gym that in addition to making me fit, promised discounts on foot reflexologies and ayurvedic massages. I heard the juice bar offered some neat mocktails and sandwiches too. It was worth a try, if not for the fitness, at least for these other indulgences. I have spent a small fortune for my new gym-wear, training shoes, arm band, head band, matching gym bag, and water bottle. I had better make this gym thing work for me, and not let it go my singing and salsa classes way, if I am to recover the investment already made.
It is my first day. The place is abuzz with beefy male trainers and uni-dimensional female trainers getting sadistic pleasure out of making flabby men and women do sit ups, chin-ups, squats, lunges and other seemingly impossible body contortions. Some of these people looked like they were not used to getting from the bedroom to the bathroom without support. There were some others who looked straight out Vogue magazine and were doing some mean reps on the ellipticals and rowing machines – I wondered if the gym had made them like this or, as my devious mind chose to believe, they were on the gym’s payroll to boost its credibility and image.
I found myself a beefy male trainer, though less menacing looking than the rest. (The uni-dimensional girls wouldn’t do much for my self esteem) The boy’s looks turn out to be deceptive. He asks me questions no gentleman would ask a self-respecting lady, starting with my age, my inner thighs and upper abdominal girth and what I ate for breakfast. My answer to the last makes him reel and his first instruction to me after gaining composure is to reduce the quantity and improve the quality of my intake (the cheek of this boy! Wait till I unleash my mother on him; she still feels her daughter is undernourished and underweight)
I am put on a routine that involves running (on a treadmill) and strength training (read lifting weights thrice what my body is designed to carry) on alternate days. Every morning I had to report the contents of my previous 24 hours’ meal, which was met either with an approving nod or a sorry shake of the day (the latter happened more often) At times I lied to take my average up.
I don’t know if my mind plays tricks on me, but neither time nor distance seems to move when I’m on the treadmill, reminding me of something I read in physics about the theory of relativity – whoever came up with that theory must have been on a treadmill when the idea first dawned on him – like Archimedes emerging from the bathtub to give the world the theory of buoyancy. After what usually seems like 3.5 hours and 32 kilometers on this machine, I look at the display panel to realise I haven’t got past 1.6kms and 25 minutes. Every month my vital statistics are measured. Month after agonising month, there is no change - not an inch this way or that. I showed such consistency that would have made my father proud had it been my school report card. I start to blame the beefy trainer. ‘How did Kareena Kapoor become size zero in 3 months?’ ‘How did Malaika Arora Khan get back in shape after child birth?’ ‘Find out what regimen they are on and put me on it right away’ I bark in my no-nonsense, office tone that produced good results on erring flunkies in the days I used to go to an office. It cuts no ice with Mr. Beefcake here. My metabolism, genes, food habits, dedication and self-respect (whatever little was still left) are all questioned.
I have decided to call it quits - with less money, even lesser self-respect and a lot of flab intact. Something else has caught my fancy now – it is a gym/slimming centres with a difference. The same promise of 20kilos off, but without exercise, without diet, without needles. These involve complicated machines with belts and other such contraptions that do the converse of what one does at the gym. You lie down still while the machine does all the moving. Industrial strength belts pulsating with extra vigour are strapped to adipose-concentrated regions such as abs and thighs. Maybe this is the solution I have been looking for. Maybe you will see a new improved me within a few months’ time, dignity and self-respect all intact! Till then, stay hungry and stay foolish, if that’s what you wish!