A trip to the morning park
It is called a “trip” because it is not a routine that we generally follow. The “trip” to the nearby public garden/park in the morning is normally a once in a while phenomenon which is triggered by the sense of obesity that engulfs the mind of my wife (although I am fed up telling her that she is not “fat”). So, when she suddenly gets the urge that she has accumulated that unwanted belly fat (which is most of the time non-existent to me!), she pokes the entire household to go for the morning exercise expeditions to the park. According to her, the fresh oxygen generated in the parks is the reactant and catalyst which will ultimately burn away her fat regardless of the rigor of the exercise. Even after showing her the benefits of my home-made gym, she prefers the good old fashioned way of having the morning walks. Many a time I have felt that it is her innate need to just spend good quality time with me and my son rather than the actual need to do exercise that is the source of this behaviour.
So, as usual once in 4 to 5 days we go to our nearby public garden wherein we walk and talk along with ingesting and inhaling the mandatory oxygen supplies. Today, it happened that I was suffering from the routine Monday blues and decided to just keep my mouth shut and observe the surroundings.
The morning public garden is a very interesting place to visit. You can see uncles and aunties (please forgive my language!) in their late 50s to 60s trying to do what seems like Yoga but the fact that they would have hardly got the time to stretch their bodies during their already completed 50 to 60 years of their lives, make them seem like a 3-month-old child who is trying to roll over to his belly for the first time. The effort shows on their face which is contorted into the various as if they are Kathakali artists practicing the facial contortions or “rasas” (although sometimes I felt at the back of my mind that the contortions are a result of the great effort they are putting in just not to fart in a public place!). Some of the intelligent uncles and aunties really know their limits and don’t try such bodily antiques but prefer to sit quietly on a bench or the ground and do the kapalbhati (made famous by Baba Ramdev, which according to him is a single shot cure for all diseases from Parkinson’s to foot ulcers). But what looks funny is that the people performing the kapalbhati (again the same problem, they had never done such a thing for their entire “working” lives and are trying it now in their “retired” life) seem like their shoulders have gone into an epileptic seizure and just the shoulder keeps jumping up and down while the stomach whose size can give a stiff competition to even a well-fed buffalo seem complacently adamant not to move an inch. The resultant effect of this muscular circus is an apple for the sarcastic eye to watch.
And then there are some uncles who walk as if they are participating in the Dandi March. Occasionally such uncles who come face to face with other species like their own suddenly burst out into a bout of laughter like the one that rakshasas did after conquering Indralok. You can later deduce that it is also part of what they call as “laughter therapy” — laugh your lungs out without any reason. And then there are such “laughter gurus” who stand in the front with their “chela uncles” and goad them to laugh out in various permutations and combinations of shouts, shrieks, howls, and growls.
And how can I left out some extra-fit guys who generally work out in the gym for their chiselled bodies and come to the park for showing off their fitness levels but sometimes feel dejectedly disappointed since the park is full of senior citizens rather than the butterflies that they want to hunt. However, their enthusiasm doesn’t fade and they continue with their jogs in the park looking here and there giving a chance for their inner voyeur to come out in the open.
But the best view of all these are the couples in their twilight years sitting or walking quietly, just talking to each other regarding the years they lived together and their need to just spend some good time together till their last breath rather than doing futile exercises to prolong their already expired visas on earth.
I know that I seem really mean in writing all this and this is what my wife also told me after reading the above but it’s just my way of looking at the complexities of a life in a simple lighter vein. After all, as my wife reminded me, we will also grow old one day.
Happy Monday to All
This article was originally published in Ethmag — The Ethmos Magazine on March 6, 2017.
