Back Down Memory Lane

Remember the days when, at about 5.30 a.m. the first member to arrive picks up the gym’s key from guru jee’s home just across the road from the gali entrance. A sign above the gym door announced the name of the gym in English or Hindi

The gym was a small room, six meters square, crowded with dumbbells, weightlifting bars, weights of all sizes and shapes, a set of parallel bars, and a chin-up bar. In one corner was a broken pulley and bicycle-chain contraption used to lift a stack of iron-plate weights. Next to the parallel bars was an improvised bench-press board, and in front of that, set into the hard-packed earth floor, a set of wooden stumps on which to do push-ups. Pegs were set into the lime-washed bricks on each wall. Members hold on to these and stand on polished wooden boards while doing squats and deep knee bends. The boards keep the floor dry, for otherwise sweat would quickly turn the earth to slippery mud.

The central column, decorated with mirrors, supports a ceiling sagged under the weight of three upper floors. Other mirrors decorate three of the walls. Between the mirrors and the iron-barred windows which look out narrowly onto a small dusty garden, old black and white portraits of local champions palely reflect the technicolor aura of pin-ups from American bodybuilding magazines.

Exercises were done with mechanical efficiency. A person doing push-ups makes way for a person doing squats who was just beyond the arch of another person swinging on the parallel bars; the movement must be choreographed for efficiency and safety.

Our gyms did'not have any orientation courses for instructors. We were trained on the job. Gym owners were scared that we might quit if we learnt too much. Most instructors were not well educated. A good physique was must be a instructor. It opens doors because people like to see a good body, be it a man or woman.

Our bodybuilding clubs are a fairly recent phenomenon in India, dating perhaps to the early part of the twentieth century. These gyms are modeled on a Western aesthetic and on Western notions of strength and fitness.