The Smell of Summer Iron

It is one of those pleasurable things to rhapsodize about. Call it the way you want - breezy, buoyant, lively or any other of those associated synonyms that my cerebral thesaurus would proffer from time to time, but the central idea being, that the moment the idea popped up in my mind, I grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, before it could escape the fringes of my evanescent memory!

The inspiration occurred to me a couple of days back when I rejoined the gym located exactly opposite Prajay Megapolis, the gated community in Kukatpally, Central Hyderabad where I reside. To say I rejoined wouldn’t be overstating the reality by a distant margin, because even though I did have a membership for the past few months, my attendance was risible to say the very least. I would have paid a few meaningless visits, and my otiose exertions would possibly have qualified to being classified under the label 'Apology of a Fitness Workout'. However as always I could trot out a myriad of excuses for my hebetudinous attitude, the primary ones being – It was winter, the most abhorred period of the year for me (for those willing to know more read kindly my Blogpost - The solar connection http://hubandspokebrain.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-solar-connection.html) which meant an increased inability to sleep causing me to look as dull as ditchwater, back to back visits to Chennai and Salem where food and company’s own water were aplenty resulting in me piling on a truckload of calories (a fusillade of 'onslaughts' on the digestive system seems to be apposite), and Peak.

An honorable mention about peak is in order. It is that period of the year when Amazon the global E-commerce and Technology giant and the employer which provides me the daily biscuit, starts pumping the populace with products and killer deals at an accelerating pace at atrociously cheap prices, thus putting a million nonplussed brick and mortar establishments on the line, leaving them scratching their heads. A million ravenous customers slog it out virtually on the land’s end of their credit cards at 11:59:59 PM as new deals go live at midnight sharp only to run out at 12:03 AM. More often than not, technology does the dirty and a web-server or two caves in due to heavy traffic, or a glitch in the checkout page of the Amazon website causes the asking price to triple or some well thought through strike by the delivery stations comes to fruition. You know something or the other like that, but the results eventually leads to a fifty thousand folks calling customer service at the same time and a massive call queueing that follows, with the hapless customer service agents on the other end at their wits end. For me, being the capacity planner, the work cut out for me was to plan the logistics of this hecatomb - Basically the hapless customer service executive headcount to be put on the wrong end of the customers’ wrath for an incessant barrage of phone calls and chats for six consecutive weeks. The ordeal begins on a black note with Black Friday at the onset of the thanksgiving weekend and unremittingly continues for 6 miserable weeks in a row till the year throws in the towel and the new one begins. 

Anyways, I am digressing as always. I could talk nineteen to the dozens about peak, but with an eye on not wanting to dwindle my paltry readership further, and to keep them hooked within their yawning goldfish attention spans, I will retreat to the substance. So you get the point, to cut a long story short, why I could not make the 300 meter walk from my doorsteps to the muscle factory.

So as spring segued into a bright jaunty summer, I was at my effervescent best. At 40 degrees, as the sun hammered down on the Deccan Plateau nestled in the heart of the Indian hinterland, at 11 AM, I loved it and craved for more degrees. I could feel the impulse and energy to stretch my tissues again, while the world sweated away and plunged into the precincts of the air conditioning at every available opportunity. Losing no time, with bottle (water to set things clear) in hand, I hit the gym again once again with a zestfulness and resolution to pump some iron and better my previous mediocre attempts.

There is something about the summer air in a gym that has the effect of a roborant drug on me. As I stepped into the hallowed portals of the gym, it almost immediately reminded me of similar efforts I had embarked on 8 years back, as a 21 year old, with all the time in the world while waiting for the official joining letter to join TCS, trying to build a macho body in Anand Gym, Chennai.

Anand Gym was one of those utterly shoddy and ramshackle establishments in the middle of a rather bourgeois neighbourhood in the neck of my woods in South Chennai, which was viewed upon by the great and the good as an incongruous hole in the heart of aristocracy. The gentry always desired Dimensions or Talwalkars or some sort of more affluent fitness den which does not have to corkscrew it’s customers into paying for its glitzy and extortionate fitness packages. They would instantly be drawn to it like a magnet. In such gyms it was commonplace to see plump boys and overweight girls wasting their parent’s hard earned money chatting away on mobile, as their legs trundle along at less than 5 kmph on the treadmill. Adipose middle-aged women never lost an ounce of weight in years but nevertheless came every single day after packing off their kids and husbands, for that 2 hour ritual of gossip that make all the difference in their lives. Funky DJ and philistine music blared on all day. The equipment typically would be brand new and imported from the Hit pits of America but most of them barely touched. There were still a few well-meaning youngsters, who did come with the right intentions to build health, but to cut a long story short, to me it was all that a gym ought not to be.

To me the kind of place, where I found my calling was Anand Gym, that revered tumbledown, where sturdy auto drivers, mechanics, small shop keepers and the lot of those, came paying a trifling 100 bucks per month. Being a Men’s only gym had its own set of advantages. We did not have to care about the more delicate pre-requisites for the gentler sex. Most of us worked out in sweaty inner vests and some bare-bodied (Never me though!). Shoes were anathema to the place and there used to be a rack outside the broken door, as an unspoken reminder to those entering with shoes, that bare-footed workouts were no less when compared to wearing Adidas, Reebok or Nike. There was no air conditioning and the old Usha fan that had been instated 15 years back rotated with a speed that drove away the air instead of circulating it. The carpets weren’t cleaned or dusted since the time they were rolled out the first time, and the rusty sharp scrappy iron protruding from the dumbbells would put off any man with finer sensibilities. The entire place reeked like the dickens as sweat from able bodied men swirled in the air and the humidity inside could choke the toughest of the Bedouins. A stickler of hygiene would have labelled the place as a cesspool and a haven for disease-making, putting it in stiff competition with the Couum River at the top of 'South India’s Sordid Set of Stinking Squalors'.

But there was a distinct air of camaraderie and bonhomie, which would have put Bertie Wooster’s pals hanging out at the Drones club to shame. The banter in the air was infectious. Youth swearing at each other in a friendly way with the choicest cuss words in Colloquial Chennai Tamil, dietary idea exchanges on the foods that need to be consumed to ensure the perfect nutrient balance, discussions on the methods to make a more nutritious recipe of Aatu Kaal (Goat Leg) Soup to be consumed as a pre-work out appetizer, and animated debates on whether Naatu Kozhi (Country Chicken) had a higher protein content over Broiler Chicken, typified the usual quotidian day at the gym. The Gym master and proprietor Venkat, an exceptionally friendly man who had won the Mr. Chennai Bodybuilding title a couple of decades back ran the show. Young and budding body builders such as myself turned to him for inspiration and drank in every word he uttered, goading him with the revered salutation 'Master'. A life-long love story with boiled eggs took root in me thanks to this man’s unrelenting endorsement of egg-whites as the perfect post work out meal. Initially disappointed that I was just a Ovo-lacto vegetarian, and not a full blown meat eater, he was of the firm view that I need to be put on an egg-heavy plan if I were to finish on the right side of the body building ledger to compensate for the potential calories lost to abstinence from meat. Gulp down as many eggs you can if you want to gain 'mass' he used to say in that awe-inspiring commanding tone of a man who knows his stuff. My mom initially recoiled with horror when I said the number of boiled eggs per day prescribed was a whopping 8, she convinced that 0 seemed a more reasonable number and she was fine with a number higher than that if one of us both agreed to leave the house! After much haggling we hit the middle ground at 3 eggs per day.

In the mornings, latest Kollywood chartbusters preferably the fast paced beat numbers more commonly known as 'Kuthu' songs played on TV and in evenings, typically it was IPL matches that took centre-stage. The debates turned into pre-match and post-match analysis even while workouts were in progress, gravid with discussions on Dhoni’s team selections and admiration for the way he captained the local favorite team CSK. There was no shortfall of amiable buzz that enveloped the place, and surely no better rejuvenation for a good workout.

Most of the folks had the tendency to focus on Upper Body strength and conditioning. The tough beefy eggs boasted of broad chests, and sturdy biceps but hardly cared about the musculature in the lower half of the torso which remained an unprepossessing sight. More the calories, the merrier seemed to be the Motto! A good chunk of the gap between 2 consecutive muscle strengthening repetitions more commonly known as the shortened 'Rep' was spent by these tough eggs in posing in front of the dusty mirror flexing their muscles trying to resemble 'All Brawn and No Brain' henchmen or side-kicks of villains in Tamil movies, more colloquially known as Stunt Parties. Though menacing looking, these blokes in fact were extremely helpful when it came to helping the thinner of the lot such as myself, who worked out cheek by jowl to gain muscle. They were most encouraging and would assist me with the bench press or provide a handy intervention and bellowing an inspirational 'Come On!' or '5 more!', as I would be on the verge of collapsing whenever I picked up a barbell or dumbbell a tad too heavy for my liking. Iron fist in a velvet glove in short. Or should it be the other way round?!

After a solid hour and half of giving my muscle all the action it craved for, I used to come out of Anand Gym, wiping my brow feeling great, the secretion of endorphins and the adrenaline rush simply incredible. As I headed home I looked forward to the cold water bath, followed by the egg whites which would be waiting for me.

So the first day in my new gym, was a similar experience but for the fact it is Unisex, and a Telugu equivalent of Anand Gym. It is a few shades different undoubtedly, add a slightly more posh setting with newer equipment and a few viragos to it, but it certainly reminded me of those golden days, as I embark on my 'Six Pack' mission for the 14^th time in my life. This time I am here to stay!