Venturing Into The Unknown: Chronicles

One fine day, my colleague comes and tells me there is a dance class/aerobics thingy right next to the office for reasonable monthly costs. Point to be noted, she stressed more on the ‘dance’ bit and I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. To cut a long story of me slowly heading towards obesity short, I ended up joining.

*Just to give you some background, I wake up at 7.30, work a 9-6 sedentary job, go back home, have dinner and sleep and that is the extent of my ‘physical activity’; the most exercise I get is when I lift my hand from my plate and put food in my mouth. I’m guessing jumping around in the shower doesn’t count as part of it.*

PC

So on a fine Thursday evening, fighting my OCD about starting on Mondays or the 1sts of a month, I slip on my sporty shoes, haul on a pair of borrowed pink pants, find the largest tee I can find (to hide all the loving handles) and ambled off to the studio. I discovered several things, one of which is that I have the stamina of half a peanut, that also one of those blackened, ugh ones. Half a jump and I'm already huffing.

Some other random things/observations/whatchamacallit:

1)    We have a different instructor for each day of the week. None of who believe in warm-ups or cool-downs. Which invariably results in me getting a very painful stitch on one side and spending 80% of the class bent over double, grunting through the pain. While seemingly everyone else, including the 50-something-year-old, keeps up.

2)    This is the first time in my life that I’m not the teacher’s pet (yes, I am/was a nerd, we all have pasts, okay?) but the uncoordinated buffoon in the background who gets everything wrong, turns left when everyone is turning right and basically is the bull in the La Opala shop. The knowledge hurts.

PC

3)    There is no graceful or feminine way of exercising/doing aerobics. You will look like a grandma doing her own version of zulsa™ (Zumba+salsa) to the music in her head, but you will have to deal with it, accept the fact that you will never look like Deepika Padukone when SHE works out.

4)    Hot instructors are NOT a myth. My Wednesday Woman has a butt that is just.perfect., hair that has just the right amount of curl, big, beautiful eyes and dance moves which would make Travolta proud. And she wears the cutest exercise-pants-thingies and racerbacks. Oh my, my. I don’t think I have to spell it out that I have a HUGE girl crush on her. Smitten, I am.

PC

I kid you not, she looks like this, except for the dark eye makeup and the blonde hair.

5)    I have robots in my class (who are skinny, little skanks who are snooty and uppity [but this might just be my jealousy talking], so I don’t know what they are doing there in the first place). Why ‘robots’, you ask? (Even if you didn't ask, I'll tell you) Because they pick up steps in less than a second and keep going for 55 minutes without even stopping. Every twist is rightly done, every kick is perfectly executed. Just to give you comparison, I pick up steps only in the last rep and keep going for all of 5 minutes before I stop, panting like an excited Labrador. Makes me wonder if they ARE actually robots.

6)    This is the worst part - I sweat like it’s nobody’s business. And it IS nobody business. Hardly two minutes into the class and my tee is soaked through and through. I kid you not. By the time I leave I look like someone played the bucket-on-the-door prank on me. While people tell me this is a good thing and fat is burning and crow is cawing and all, I look like I lifted some fifty weights and did some major workout, when all I did was jump uncoordinatedly around, pointing my toe at the wrong times. Also, the robots? They don't break a sweat... they are just... dewy. WTF?

PC

Bonus point: All the ‘next days’ of the first week? Anything I moved, except probably my eyes and teeth, hurt like a muthaphakin’ muthaphaccer, making me aware of muscles and parts of the body that I didn’t know I had.

All in all, I be in a dilemma. I love food. I can't stress that enough. And exercise is a bitch. I can't stress that enough either. But still, I have hope that someday… someday I might be as stamin-ous (like I have said before, I reserve the right to make up my own words on my blog) as my Wednesday Woman.

But that day is definitely not today. Sigh.

P.S: And I have people like her on my feed who are so hot and live such healthy lives that I feel guilty drinking even water. P.P.S: Gah.. don't laugh.
P.P.S.S: God created food. For people to eat. Man created exercise. It is unnatural. (Just some excuses that I make up to feel better about skipping class on Tuesdays when there is a MONSTER instructor who makes me pick up 2.5 kgs in each hand and squat-walk all the way across the room. Six times. Like I said, MONSTER.)
P.P.P.S.S: HAPPY HALLOWEEN, y'all. Go watch Annabelle.
 

The Road I Failed To Take

Haven't we all had people in our lives who leave behind a faint sense of dissatisfaction for not having truly spoken to them about everything that mattered? Haven't we all had at least one person in our lives who we don't even know properly but have always had the feeling that we would have been good friends, if either of you had only taken the pain to let go of the ego and extend that hand? That someone who has misunderstood you grossly and you have made the same mistake with equal vigor, parted with not so much as a passing glance and then had it come back and irk you in some small way?


(If you haven't, then GAH! to you)


This goes out to one person who I had a lot of faith in, the key word here being had.

I thought you were the sensible one, the one who has the sense to be objective. But more than that, I felt we were friends. Not the close kind of bffs, but the kinds who run into each other in Forum ten years from now and have coffee over how much life has changed. 


But I guess the feeling wasn't mutual. Ah well.


But the thing is, I am worried. Just a little bit though.
Worried that the same friends who you hold close to your heart and fight tooth and nail for are the same ones who never thought twice about calling you that without a moment's hesitation. That too, in front of me. The 'opposition'.
Their poison has already got to you. Don't let them catch you unawares though. 


You think you are always one step ahead? Little do you realise that I withdrew long back. I have been sitting on the sidewalk watching you trying to outsmart yourself... Trip all over your own two feet. 
I considered you a worthy adversary till you played dirty. You stooped down instead of rising up to challenge my very existence. I was just disappointed that you didn't. 


I still have a soft corner for you, somehow. In spite of the unnecessary dirty looks and the conspiracies. 
But you have lost my respect and regard. 
Not that it matters to either of us but still... Like Wordsworth, someday I shall sit on my couch in a pensive mood and contemplate, not daffodils, but a friendship that withered before it bloomed. 


This is mostly because you have helped me calculate my GPA every time. This is almost entirely because you taught me what a Chi Square is when I most needed it. 


Thank you.


P.S: A very happy valentine's day to all those who are hell-bent on celebrating it, but be safe and keep yourselves far away from any violently mental anti-love people. I ceased to believe in the 'magic of St. Valentine' a coupla years back, though. And yes, I don't like being predictable in case y'all were expecting full on mush post :P

Funky Fear? Or Fear Of Funk? Or Something Like That

‘Don’t let fear take away your funk.’ 

 –Ted Mosby

If you’re scared of looking like a fool, you’ll never try to fly. If you can't jump off, you'll never even discover than you can fly, in the first place. Never know that you can do it well too.

If you’re afraid of your two left feet, you won’t know what joy just jumping around like a crazy loon brings to your heart. You won’t know what it’s like to forget the world and live in that moment of crazy, giggly joy.

If you’re terrified of germs, you’ll never learn to love the crisp, tangy golguppas straight off the street vendor’s filthy hands. You’ll never know the taste of the burning khatta pani as you gobble to keep up with his speed. The later diarrhea will be better than not having the guts to try at all. 

Let go sometimes. Its ok to be a freak. It’s ok to be a fool. It’s ok is stand out. It’s ok to be different. It’s most definitely ok to NOT conform. Don’t do things because they do it. Do them because you want to. Because it gives you that small iota of satisfaction from having accomplished something. Do them because you pride yourself in being creative, in being a class apart from the herd.

If you keep being fearful of every little thing, terrified of making the wrong choices and having anxiety attacks over every small thing you ever had to do, you’ll lose your funk. And trust me, you’re nothing without your funk for your funk is what makes you who you are.

Your funk is what distinguishes you from the seven billion others who inhabit the same planet and breathe the same air as you.

Preachy much? It’s a phase, I think. It’ll go yaway soon, I hope.