Art of losing

"Oh my God! you have gained too much weight" my friend exclaimed on seeing me after a long time,making me feel awkward and slightly uncomfortable. When you meet someone after a long time, the first thing that people say after a hello is about some change in your physical appearance ,in most cases some negative change. It probably gives them a tinge of sadistic pleasure . "You look like a giant " exclaim a few others keeping me reminded of the fact that I look huge these days. Weight changes have started haunting me . Now I fear looking at myself in photographs, mirror reflections and shadows. I felt it was time I took some step before I start looking like a load filled Indian truck. Off I headed to Talwalkars, a Porsche gym in my neighbourhood, with my roommate, for some kind of magical remedy to weight loss(preferably without any physical effort) .




I expected a hot lady to be the instructor of a hi-fi gym. On the contrary the instructor resembled a morose headmistress of a tamil medium primary school. I doubted if she would make me kneel down outside the gym if I was'nt regular. She showed us around the huge gym. Dozens of people like me, having no self control over their eating, were sweating it out trying to get themselves in shape. "I look fitter than most of them" I consoled myself looking at the really huge ones. She showed us all sophisticated equipment for all parts of the body, most of them not so intuitive to use. "This is the treadmill room" she said in a robotic tone as she walked.

Men and women were running towards nowhere on a few machines and a few out of shape people were riding cycles that dont move at all. "Check out that girl" pointed my roommate at the girl running pointlessly on the treadmill. The headmistress of the gym heard us and gave us a nasty stare. I am sure if she had a wooden scale with her ,she would have held it vertically and hit us on our knuckles. I was taken to another room where I was tied up to some electronic equipment. It beeped and puked out a sheet of paper. I wondered if it was my horoscope. However ,it was actually a data sheet about my body. I had 20% fat in me it seems. It also had other complex data like amount of carbohydate and water reserve in my body(made me feel like I was some hydroelectric government project).


She introduced me to the gym master Kumar. He was a short man who looked heavily puffed up with his huge chest and arms. It looked like he was puffed and baked with yeast in a microwave at high temperature to get all the bulge over his arms. I mumbled him a frightened hello with a tiny smile. "Our yearly package is 22700 including tax" HM said like reading lines from a script. "By yearly , do you mean 1 year ?" I asked ,sounding stupid. She was'nt amused, at all, with my sarcasm. "Tell me if there are any discounts in the future " I said preparing myself to leave. I knew I was'nt worth 22k an year. She gave me a look which said "Yeah,like you can even afford to pay our discounts". "Check out this girl"said my roommate pointing to another girl. "Come,lets leave quickly" I said looking at kumar giving us a stare. We fled before Kumar and the headmistress could punch us on the face.

Screw the gym. l will run at the beach like lots of people do here. I came to a firm resolve. It was 5.30 am . There was serenity at Besant nagar beach early in the morning. Only few health conscious people were walking along the beach. There were extremely beautiful girls jogging together at the other corner. I guess there was secret society of beautiful girls in Chennai who met every early morning and then stay concealed for the rest of the day. I started my jog with an instant speed,got tired in 15 seconds and slowed down.

A girl came alongside me jogging at my speed running parallel to me. We were running parallel for some 3 minutes when she gave me a smile and said "Hey, pooja here". Astonished at a beautiful girl's self-introduction to me , I said my name in a subsided tone. "you jog regularly?" she asked. "Oh,yeah! regular . very regular" I said in a quick manner. "Do you even know what regular means?,you sick liar!" asked my conscience to me. I ignored the pricky question from my conscience. "what do you do for a living?" she asked. "I am a software engineer" I said. After 30 seconds I relaized that I was being a dumbass by not asking what she did. "So what do you do?" I asked her. "I am a model. I work for an ad agency in chennai" she said. "Oh ,great!" I said. "She is a model. God, she is a model" I told myself to assimilate the fact."How cool would it be to tell everyone that I ran with a model at the beach" I smiled at the prospect of becoming the guy with the best story of the day.

"Oyye,duuuude" shouted my roommate suddenly jogging to my right in a sleeveless banian,uncombed hair and shorts which were infact a bit too short. "Oyyyeee,wake up oyyee" he said as he jogged alongside me. "No no, dude. dont wake me up . Things are going too well . I am running with a model. Please dont ruin it"I pleaded. He disppeared immeditely. "So you are a model ,huh?" I said as I turned to my left. She was'nt there anymore. I opened my eyes out of my sleep to find my roommate standing with a brush in his mouth, in a sleeveless banian,uncombed hair and very short shorts, looking at me. "Dont you have to run at the beach today? Its 7. You better wake up now" He said. "Running plans cancelled " I said and went back to sleep for another 4 hours.


With beach running proving to be a hindrance to my sleep timing,the only leftover alternative to weight loss was a crash diet. I ordered a salad for lunch. It was filled with cabbage leaves,channa,sprouted beans. Everything was so tasteless. It was getting more and more difficult to eat. "Assume you are a goat" I told myself forcing my mind to take in the salad. I was able to munch away a few cabbage leaves. I wonder how goats are able to eat raw leaves everyday. I finished off the salad somehow and was about to leave when a chocolate donut at the pastry shop winked at me. It had an evil smile ,alluring me nearer and nearer to it. The goat in me vanished and the monster in me was back. Crash diet crashed and donut vanished .

Weight loss is no mean joke pal!


P.S: Dear roommate, Everything about you is fiction. Please don't throw me out of the house.


Cheers,
:)