Geetanjali Krishna: Will it be a hit or a 'miss'?

Perhaps it is the post-holiday weight-gain guilt, but every second person I meet these days seems obsessed with fitness. “Don’t you have a personal trainer yet?” asked a friend I meet on one of those rare occasions when I manage to drag myself, puffing and panting, to the park for a walk. The next thing I knew, she’d sent me hers, this tall hunk with rippling muscles and barely out of college.

Minutes of conversation with him made it amply clear that he was obsessed with fitness: “You’ll soon see how exhilarating it is when your body leaps to your every command…” he enthused, “it’s not about weight — it’s about taking control of your body,” said he as I listened doubtfully.

Anyway, the session got going quite promisingly as I discovered that while my body didn’t exactly leap to my bidding, it wasn’t as recalcitrant as I’d expected. I asked him how and why he got into fitness training. “I dream of winning a position in the Mr India contest. And my ambition is to earn enough money to fulfill that dream,” said he. Fitness training, he said, brought in extra money and kept him fit in the bargain. “Last year, I started a gym in my village in Lado Sarai, and am now planning to start a new one,” he added, “city people are so crazy about fitness, there’s a lot of money to be made in this business!”

What was it like, I asked, to train for a contest like Mr India? It was a tough combination of diet and fitness, he said. “My coach is fanatical about both!” said he. The diet, he explained, needed to consist mainly of lean muscle-building proteins.

So omlettes of a dozen egg whites, handfuls of nuts, litres of milk and kilos of fruit disappeared down his gullet every day.

“I used to eat a lot of chicken too,” said he, “but vegetarian protein is leaner and healthier than animal protein.”

His exercise regimen left me even more amazed. The man exercised and lifted weights six days a week for at least five hours with his coach.

Before every workout, he bathed with water as hot as he could bear, to get his muscles warmed up. “Sometimes when I finish my shower, I feel like I’ve been boiled alive!” he grinned, “but it’s good for me…” It didn’t sound all that fantastic to me, but I wisely kept my counsel. Who wants to mess with a man with so much muscle?

As we neared the end of the workout, he looked at me critically. “You’ve not sweated that much…” he said. I said of course I had.

“My coach makes me lift weights wearing a plastic jacket!” said he. Apparently, the plastic causes the skin to sweat even more, and the water loss results in higher muscle definition. “And before a show, we can’t eat or drink too much, else the fat under the skin plumps out and obscures the muscles,” he went on.

To me, it was voluntary torture — to him, it was all totally worth it. “I like to test the limits I can push my body to,” said he, “also, our weightlifters have been performing so well internationally, I also want to try my hand at it!” Looking at me, sweaty and woebegone, he smiled, suddenly seeming more human: “but you take it easy, you’re not trying to be the next Mr India…as for me, even if I’m not a hit in the contest, I’ll remain a hit with the girls…!”