Stars and straps

There’s a gym across the street from where I live. I’ve been eyeing it ever since I moved into my apartment. Finally, after four months of dithering, I call the number. The owner, Jim, has a friendly, open manner. Within minutes we are talking of bowel movements and other excretions: “One of my clients thanked me for putting the yellow back in her urine!” he tells me, as proof that the powdered potions he markets for a well-known company are truly beneficial.

He’d like to get me on a total-body health program but eventually I opt for trying the three-days-a-week group session that’s available for a mere $80 a month. I go across to meet him the next day. He is a wonderful advertisement for his training routine, a dark-haired man in his 30s , energetic and fit with a mildly military cut to his personality. The gym is composed of two rectangular rooms outfitted like brightly lit torture chambers. Straps, chains, weights and other mysterious equipment hang from the walls or are tastefully arranged on the floor. It makes me so nervous just to see the array that I miscount the money of my first payment and Jim has to ask for the extra $20 I owe him.

I go for my first session the next day at 5pm. The trainer, Buzz, has chocolate brown skin and film star good looks packed into a short, muscular frame. He is amazingly focused, able to divide his attention between two or three different groups, each one training at different speeds and levels in the same room. There’s music over the speakers and also a stopwatch on the wall that he uses to keep track of who needs to switch to their left foot or begin the ball-bouncing routine.

Half an hour speeds by on sweaty wings and I return to my apartment feeling like the summer Olympics are surely within my reach.

Needless to say, when I wake up the next day my body whines and complains, reminding me that I am much too old for such sudden shocks to the system. I pay no attention, but return for the rest of my month’s sessions. The only man in the group is about the same age as me, white-haired, short and stocky. He has a few blue stars tattooed onto the side of his face. One day he turns up with all his white hair shaved off and — surprise! The rest of his scalp is also covered in small, pretty blue stars.

At the end of one month, I decide I can only afford the $50 unlimited access fee. So I leave the group to spend half an hour every other day chugging along alone on the treadmill. It’s not as much fun with no friendly encouragement from Buzz to keep me focused. Still, I chase the blinking red dots on the treadmill’s digital monitor with my eyes, counting off the seconds, enjoying the mild sweat. I listen to podcasts with my tiny iShuffle clipped to my T-shirt and know that I’ll never lose my belly flab. But my urine is primrose yellow! All’s well with the world.

( Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, tells us tales of her parallel life in Elsewhere, US, in this fortnightly series; >marginalien.blogspot.in )

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