
Working out Einstein
Normally gyms advertise themselves by showing photos of earnest looking people pumping weights or crunching lats or some such. But gyms actually make much more money from customers like me; so much so that I’m thinking of charging my gym some kind of royalty payment.
For the first two years after the birth of my first child I would have workout sessions every night; for the baby simply refused to stop howling and kicking all arms and feet at night; even after being endlessly fed, burped and changed, unless I not only rocked her in my arms but also keep doing a sort of foxtrot-meets-army-parade step all around the room. Hup one two spin hup one two shhh baby spin all night long. By the time this relaxing phase was over, the second baby came along; but this time I was way up the learning curve. I had learnt Bharatnatyam steps as well.
No, I’m kidding…for the second edition I was simply more blasé or possibly permanently deafened, so I slept through the nights; the long and short was that by the time he turned two, I figured I could no longer attribute my muffin top and various other bulges to after-effects of pregnancy; so I decided to join the neighbourhood gym.
I took an annual membership even; because the gym manager convinced me how it can save money.
And I went for perhaps five and half days in the year. Definitely saved the gym’s money.
So that’s why people like me should be the poster children for gyms because marginal cost on us is extremely low.
It’s not that I didn’t try but I did have various philosophical problems.
First was the timing. What with a job and two small children and can’t go on empty stomach and can’t go two hours after meal, I was forced to go either at ungodly early morning hours — the hours in which, if my soul is forced to wake up it wants to go into a deep, dark Waiting for Godot place and not listen to Desi Beats and do Zumba; or late evening hours after work — when a good cup of tea and a book seem to be shooting love-arrow shaped vapours at my soul.
My personal trainer was a gentleman; the brawny muscles of whom his T-shirt could barely contain, and a built-in megaphone in his vocal chord box. The first time I met him, he handed some 5 kg dumbbells in each of my hands. No no, I said; I’m not looking to prep for the next body building contest; don’t give me the hardcore stuff; and he ran into the changing room and muffled his laughter.
He seemed to regard me as one of those puzzle sets with 8 moving parts that can be twisted and re-arranged to make hundreds of different polygonic shapes. He’d make me lift this arm and that back muscle I didn’t even know I possessed; and when I’d protest that if I break a bone it’s not going to look good for the gym; he’d simple go all Nike on me and keep repeating Just Do It; and such was the force of his personality that I would creak and groan and suddenly find myself eye to eye with the back of my knee. And this would just be the warmup.
Gyms are a great way to learn some high — level physics, however. Take the special theory of relativity. You clamber onto the dreadmill. You start running. Faster and faster; you feel yourself approaching the speed of light. Your mind travels to various galaxies and black holes. Lungs a-bursting tongues a-thirsting. After what feels like three centuries you slow down, return to Earth and take a look at the screen; and it’s just been 1 minute 3 seconds; you’re feeling 300 years older but everyone around you has aged only by 1 minute. Fascinating.
Nonetheless, a good workout did give a sense of well-being; I’d happily inhale the collective exhalations and steam let off by the gym crowd by the time I finished; fully resolving to return the next day; but because going the next day seemed to largely involve getting up from bed and not polish off that chocolate cake, it didn’t often happen.
Two weeks before my membership would expire the gym would start sending messages like WE MISS YOU and WHERE ARE YOU till I would feel so emotionally needed and tugged that, like a freshly opened can of soda, I’d be frothing with bubbly new year resolutions and go to renew my annual membership.
Here’s some gym vocabulary I’ve learnt over the years; some I’ve read, some I’ve coined myself.
Flabbergasted: aghast at seeing how fat tummy has become
Abdicate: giving up all hopes of ever developing abdominal muscles
Calorie: units which measure how tasty a particular food item is
E = mc2: a small amount of mass is equal to a large amount of energy; which is why it takes two weeks to burn off the fat from your left thigh from a single bite of a Snickers bar
Squat: the number of grams you lose after huffing and puffing and sweating bucketfuls for hours
Flatterer: your gym personal trainer
Exercycle: clothes dryer
