Pink Blues...

I am frequenting a gym again..The "signs" were out there for quite some time..And I refused to acknowledge them for a while...until this friend who has a naturally sharp eye for these signs, acceded their presence..The pounds were probably visible to the extraneous naked eye...notwithstanding the camouflages and concealment. So, there's no time to lose..the inches have to be lost...There is this new women's fitness center in the neighborhood - Pink (Fitness One's initiative). I enquire, I go and I enroll, for a quarter-term.Its after all a few inches...and wouldn't a few months do?



Habitually, I look around and evaluate the gym (after footing the bill).. The gym has a good-looking receptionist and even better looking models, smiling with their shining teeth and half bitten green apples from the posters. And some more disporting those hour- glass or water-glass figures in various positions (exercise positions), flaunting their biceps and concave abs, and shapely (or shapeless? ) obelics. I take a keener (and sadder) look at some of those...and instinctively conjure up a few images of myself amongst them, and with brightened hopes, I vow to return the next morning...On my way back, I motivate myself, getting a few "branded" workout apparel. All plans laid, I go to sleep, dreaming of those figurines on the posters..

Day One - Now, waking up in the morning is not what I do best everyday..I force myself into thinking of those focal naval concavities in an attempt to impel my senses...and move myself out of bed (The first Move It...). I prepare a cup of hot tea and gulp it down with a few cookies..well, you need energy to work out, dont you ? I change to the conventional workout appearance, and set out on my fifteen-minute-intermittent-jog-walk to the gym, greeting and evading a couple of stray dogs in the course of my journey. The day break is a pretty placid scene..a few sleepy middle-aged men in apparently what seems to be their nightwear sent to the milk booths to fetch the milk packets for the morning tea, the road-side shops half-opening their shutters to call it a day-break, and of course the co-gymmers and joggers with their sneakers and ipods.

I reach the gym on time, congratulating myself on a well-walked journey. Am welcomed warmly and introduced to my trainer. She is a petite female, not one of those figurines , and has her sins well obscured (you know what I mean!!). She asks me to walk the treadmill again. "But I came walking for 10 minutes.." I try protesting, and embark on my physical adventure on the treadmill. I take a well-deserved break after the first 5 mins of peregrinating on the treadmill, and use the break wisely to scrutinize around. There are definately more amusing goods in the gym, than the banal digital meters and the run-on-the-mill machines.

I see women of all sizes and unique fettle. Some look exquisitely young, until you get to notice their faces, dedicatedly running on the treadmills and performing some wierd acts like hand-grinding a non-existing hand-grinder, rotating the arms centripetally. In the yester-years, these were called manual jobs , while in this newfangled era, these are called exercises. There was a particularly compelling character, who looked quite made-up in her evening-attire, who walked in with a cute handbag, and a big fat book, switched on the fan, planted the handbag, ipod in their respective sockets, started the slow pedalling of the cycle, whilst concentrating on the book and the music. I am shaken off from my trance by my trainer. "Move It", she orders and I dolefully go back to my run on the mill.

The next morning, I cant't force myself to think of those figurines, and even when I do, I can't move myself out of bed. I steal a typical another 10 mins of precious sleep for the next 30 minutes, and end up late in the gym, inspite of the auto-rickshaw ride. I "move it" for about 20 minutes in the various stretching machines, joggers, cycles and treadmills with sporadic intervals to sneak out under the A/C. Not-to-mention the abs-exercises in lying positions for "toning up" and the weights for "lean muscle building".

It's been a month and a half now. I earnestly check my weight on the digital machine hoping for a loss of a couple of pounds...And Lo and Behold, I've procured 200 additional grams ..."Its metabolism", the trainer explains..."yours is unique"...Well, I am probably special in every pound of flesh that I possess.