Bhai jaise Muscles

The word bhai carries numerous connotations.  The most overbearing one among these is relative to a certain shirtless, jean-panted, guitar wielding individual gamboling around in the midst of a dozen men clad in coral pink tunics to a callow vocalization of O... O... Jaane Jaanaa.  In the late 90s, i.e. the era when this song was somewhat of a rage, the said bhai had not only established a strong foothold for himself within the elite clan of Bollywood Khans, but had also demonstrated that bulging biceps and firm pecs, carefully waxed for effect, were often more important a factor than skillful acting to be a successful "hero".  The bhai had such a persuasive impact over the psychology of the male populace that city gyms were thronged with hoards of amorphic males desirous of getting their anatomies chiseled into more respectable forms.  The bhai fever hadn't spared me and my best friend Amit either.  We would both bike to our neighborhood gym, me on my Atlas city bike and Amit on his BSA SLR, discussing the acting skills of a different Khan in the film Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai, which was another late 90s phenomenon.  The Bollywood craze and gym goals of the male community were so intertwined that even our instructor Rajesh Sir would motivate us through our weight lifting reps with references to the bhai and occasionally to a popular Bollywood paaji known for his ढाई किलो के हाथ and the fact that त्याने त्याची बॉडी powder खाऊन नाही बनवली ("powder" being the vernacular for steroids).

My stint at Rajesh Sir's gym lasted exactly one summer.  That was the beginning of my noncommittal love affair with gyms.  Two years later, I joined a certain Shetty Sir's gym with a different group of friends.  Shetty Sir was an affable, compassionate, uncle-type instructor with amply pudginess around the waist but with brawny arms as strong as iron bands, demonstrative of his commitment to both fitness and his family business of Udupi restaurants.  Bollywood by this time had seen in the film Kaho Na Pyar Hai the arrival of a tall "hero" who not only had the biceps the bhai had blazoned a few years ago, but also had the features of a Greek God and could dance like the original master of dance did in Mukkala Muqabla.  While the boys found in this "hero" their new motivation for muscle building and indulged in frivolous discussions regarding the possibility that this new "hero" had taken bodybuilding lessons from the bhai and dancing lessons from the said dance master, Shetty Sir, the gentleman that he was, would motivate us by comparing weight lifting to physical labor and reminding us of how appropriately and aesthetically built many physical laborers were, and at the same time illustrating to us how privileged we were to be able to afford a safe environment in his gym to work on fitness as opposed to the average physical laborer who was exposed to hazardous situations every moment on the job.  He was also a staunch proponent of Yoga and taught us large number of asanas.  Eat healthy and exercise hard, Shetty Sir would say.

My stint at Shetty Sir's gym too lasted exactly one summer.  It was more than half a decade later when I entered a gym again, this time at UAkron, although I took advantage of the gym more for badminton and racquetball than for lifting weights.  Since then I have sporadically held gym memberships with American gym chains, but never engaged with any instructors or paid the gyms enough visits to say that I am a regular gymmer.  I have found that the first part of Shetty Sir's advice regarding eating healthy is relatively easy to implement with vegetarian diet and controlled eating, but the following the second part of his advice regarding exercising hard has been particularly challenging over the years.  Pavana and I even purchased an elliptical as part of an attempt to make exercise part of our daily routine, but the only exercise derived from the elliptical was when assembling it at the time of purchase, carrying it when we moved from the apartment to our home, and disassembling it when we sold it last year.  I do try to exercise every once in a while by going for a walk or executing a Suryanamaskar here and a Chakrasana there.  While I recognize that all all this amounts to an unsatisfactory amount of exercise, life has thankfully not been reduced to the point where I would tighten my glutes once a day while sitting on a chair and claim that exercise for the day is done.  Not yet, at least.