The gymnasium can prove to be the epicentre of loads of action!
*And by that I do not mean just lifting weights or performing with the rod!* It is a full blown gossip monger’s paradise!
My gym is abuzz with some scandal or LOL moment always!
It’s like going every morning to your very own news weekly or daily!
There’s this late 30 something guy who comes there...I call him Mr. Blackie!
Dark as ash, with moustache...and somehow living in the conviction that the vest style uppers were made for just his kind of drop dead looks*yes, one can actually die after looking at him*
Pssssssst...my dear, those multi coloured vests are awful...wish I could tell you that...but to do that I would have to actually TALK to you...and I wish THAT never happens! A torture for the eyes is preferable to the torture to the entire system!
Of course the blessing there is, he is so dark n sweaty that the bunch of ugly gnawing patch of underarms’ hair get hidden in his skin colour*nope, I don’t stop my regime to look at that but the very things that you pray life does not show you, end up becoming the very things that surface before you, more than often-like lizards mating- ewwwwwwwwwww!*
And this obnoxious guy*he has sparkling white teeth, by the way* the other day was checking himself out in the huge mirrors put up on all the walls. Suddenly the music changed to a lively number and he broke out in a Mika-style head rotation along with springing jumps and actually continuing to do so for full one minute!!!!!!!!!
Had he done it for half a minute more, I would have for sure needed an ambulance for sudden and irreparable cardiac arrest! The jarring moves leave me in shudders even now and I dread the number being played again in the gym!
There’s another specimen! He’s Mr. Stud!
Lean, tall again mid 30’s*that’s the dangerous age bracket it seems* and some would call him handsome!
When he moves it feels as though his body is screaming, “Oh look at me! I am god’s gift to mankind!”
He wears the hosiery material shorts and t-shirt that cling to his physique worse than that white saree in the waterfall, on Mandakini’s body in the flick ‘Ram Tere Ganga Maile’! The scene here is equally obscene my friends, or perhaps that is his very aim! If you have it, flaunt it syndrome! And by now, every boy and girl, instructor and helper, receptionist and watchman in the gym knows he has it!
Thank god for small err big err...whatever mercies!
He would work out and then check out*himself and the handful of women around* and then raise his leg or protrude out his butt!
He’s almost Menkah in action, thinking we all lesser mortals are Vishwamitras!
Then there is another nerd...a Punjab Da Puttar*PDP* who insists on wearing Capri pants to work out!
Twice they have torn during leg lunges, yet not deterring him to alter his path...I think he likes the idea of his trouser slitting...
He believes in that tagline
“It is not right to always pull someone’s leg...
It is not right to always pull someone’s leg...
You should also spread them sometimes ;-)”
Does anyone here comes actually to work out*except me of course*?
And then there would be the aerobic sessions!
These are revelations in themselves!
If you happen to be standing in the third or fourth line, you are bound to be a victim of ‘Dhrishti-atyachaar’-the screwing up of your vision!
People would bend forward in their teeny weenie t-shirts, giving you a full view of their lower inners peeking out unapologetically at the first hint of public glory!
And now my dearies...brand does matter!
They’d be a VIP or an Amul gazing in our faces...
They’d also be Jockey’s and Tommy Hilfiger’s!
And you’d be surprised to know how famous bright red and fluorescent yellows are with men here in Uttar Pradesh...or is it just another one of bizarre Kanpur traits or worse still...is it actually a men-all-over-the-world fetish?
Animal prints too, eh? Hmm...I discovered these at the gym...where else!
But sometimes I get confused...not in the exercise step silly, in the dilemma, if it was the same print tit bit worn yesterday, covering my predecessor’s butt, as of now!
And please would people stop wearing low waist undergarments...it can be so bloody disturbing in so bloody everything!

As for women...they are pretty much the same here as anywhere else!
There are items of these species with full make up on at 6.30 a.m.*yes, in the morning*
There are a couple who exercise for 15 minutes and make the male trainer press their bodies for the next 15 minutes in the name of stretches to relax! You should watch them close their eyes and smile with pleasure while in this act. I would give my right hand, right leg and right everything to know what they’d be thinking at that moment!
There is one who emerged out of a cubicle in the changing room recently and when I tried to venture in, much to my surprise a full bloodied man somehow squeezed his way out too from the same 6 feet by 6 feet box!
Something inside me warned not to rush out screaming “Magic, magic...8th wonder just happened in there!”
I soon found out that both are happily married...to separate spouses of course!
There is another lady who one day rushed into the changing room with tears in her eyes. Out of concern, I followed her*yes, only concern...my gossipy antennas were resting in peace...at least till then!*
She was screaming to someone over the mobile phone...
“What do you think of yourself? You would give that bitch more attention than me? You think I don’t understand these games? How dare you touch her waist?”
I sneaked out thinking I can’t help in this...only to bump into the new six-packs instructor in the corridor explaining over his mobile, “I am so sorry...I will not touch any female again...I promise...come out baby...I’d touch you and heal my mistake!”
OHH MYYY GOOOOOD GODDD!
Then there is an enthusiast with holes in track pants that are begging termination of their lives, but the hostess holds on to them as though her own dear life depended on it!
There are some who come with hair neatly tied in a plat the first day, but seeing the heat quotient soon come with their zulfein laharaaoing in the ceiling fans!
Some ooze of the most expensive perfumes, others make you pray that you could keep your nose at home and come there for training!
There are some who wipe their sweat in slow motion format of movies and others who drench their chiselled countenances with cold water in full public view!
There are those who lift the 1 kg dumb bells as though they are obliging it and some again who would increase the kgs going by the number of onlookers admiring it*no matter if they can barely walk out on their own legs after that*
You can spot the best of cat walks on the tread mill and the craziest of moans and screams coming from the weight section! Since there are just men in that domain, we do not rush to aid or speculate!
There are many who letch and many who are being letched at, both categories feeling their paisa was vasool-ed!
It’s a fun world of work out...you just need to work out the way to fun!
And now in writing this, another significant revelation has dawned upon me...I now know why I am bloody not losing any weight! :(