35mm HiGhLiGhT rEeL

Try picturing Tarzan now: Over 6 feet tall, 30” waistline, 50” chest, 22” biceps and just when you have your jaws touching the ground, your eyeballs slide down a little lower to spot his matchstick legs. What a put off that must be. Probably the same reason we always see Salman Khan without a T-shirt, but never without his jeans. But, in one of the stage performances in a continent outside Asia, the foreign crowd really cheered for him when he tore off his T-shirt, not cuz there weren’t guys in neighbourhood with a better body, but what they were witnessing was an iconic figure in the second largest film industry in the world. It seems he got really charged up by the response from the audience and the next thing we saw him do was pull down his jeans. The moment he did that, the crowd went completely silent as they couldn’t relate the contrasting image of a human figure they saw in front of their eyes. It seemed like a combination of upper body belonging to a 100m athlete, while the lower body was gifted by a marathon runner.

I have observed people in fitness centers and gymnasiums; they religiously work hard in the wrong direction all the time. The ones heading in the right direction are engrossed focusing only on their upper bodies, be it arms, chest, back, shoulders or abdomen. They would let the legs workout to be taken care of by the professional body builders. I wouldn’t entirely blame the lack of knowledge the instructors hold, but the fault lies on personal fronts. Legs workout is probably the most tiring of all the body parts. One needs to be sure to give proper rest to the legs muscles the following day, in order to see them develop to their maximum capacity. It’s really hilarious to see the regular builders in the gym occasionally entering the arena wearing shorts, exposing their legs which appear to be suffering from malnutrition.

For me, I love the weekend in gym, cuz that’s when I have scheduled my legs workout. We have a brotherhood formed of people who don’t neglect working out these muscles below their torso. In a way it puts me in an advantageous position, as hardly anyone tries to flock around the area in the gym where machines specific for legs workout are positioned. It’s hard to describe the mental and physical feeling of liberation one experiences after this tiring hour of workout session. Squats with 220 pounds, leg extensions with 130 pounds, leg press with 475 pounds and calf raises with 110 pounds give me a good enough adrenaline rush. That’s the beauty of legs workout, thighs constitute as one of the biggest pair of muscles in our body, other than chest and back and have the potential to withstand a higher range of weight than any other muscle. Yet I see some guys dishonoring them by doing squats with hardly 22 pounds of weight.

One of my friends at the gym is a young intern doctor, who without any doubt understands the chemistry of our body more than any of us. I had taken a break for a minute before hitting the final set for squats, when he stopped by on his way towards the men’s room. He asked me “I don’t understand, why Indian men neglect legs workout as though it’s a social crime or something”. I took a sip of water from the bottle, smiled at him and said “Probably because the Indian women pull their men’s T-shirt off before sliding their trousers down”. We had a real good laugh but hardly did we realize that some ladies around overheard this sarcastic comment. They gave us such aggressive glare sprinkled with some cyanide as though they wanted to kill us that very moment.

But who cares, I have already achieved a state of Nirvana and I can’t let some ants wriggling around, psyche me out.