Knees track your toes*

Fitness as a concept was something which I had never heard of as a kid. Sure, I had seen leotard-clad people in movie-songs in Indian movies. But I took that literally - as in, movie stars wear fitness clothes as a part of the costume-change routines which invariably peppered the videos for songs. But it did not strike me that ordinary people could actually go to a gym and work with all the equipment or could allocate time in a day specifically for the purpose of doing "exercise".

Sure, my dad used to advocate after-dinner walks for the family. But these were fun things to look forward to and could always be skipped (by sis and me that is - dad religiously goes for after-dinner walks and drags mom along too :-)). Other than that, I don't remember doing activities specifically for the purpose of keeping fit. Of course we had the Physical Training (PT) classes at school. We used to do a variety of exercises under the watchful eye of a PT teacher and play games like kho-kho, throwball, dodge-ball, lock and key etc. But PT classes fell into the category of "fun-things" along with the regular evening games we played with neighborhood kids and the like.

Given these facts, it is no big surprise that I realized only during my final year of undergrad studies that my college actually had a gym for the students' use. It had only a few equipment not in the best of conditions, still it was there. Of the other sports facilities, I had made use of the badminton courts fairly regularly, the cricket pitch once when we practised for an all-girls cricket game (which we lost spectacularly) and the sports ground a few times for simply running around.

This running happened when the hostel wardens came up with the brilliant idea that all hostellers should get up at 6.00am in the morning and run around the huge sports ground. Apparently, they wanted us all to become more fit. Obviously, after a couple of sleepy head days, we soon perfected a system by which we took turns giving proxies to all our friends in order to not show up everyday. This proxy system gained such widespread popularity that at some point hardly 25 girls were actually running while the attendance showed that at least a hundred of us had supposedly showed up :-D. The forcible effort to make us fit was halted soon after this was discovered!

Anyway, bottom line is, exercising for the sake of exercise was something I did not usually do. In India I could not notice too many bad effects either. The plentiful walking and physical movement everyday mercifully ensured that.

Then I came to the US. I was very surprised to find that each and every food item had nutrition information on it. And what's more, people actually checked the nutrition labels when buying food! Soon enough, I started doing it too. Now I am so habituated to this practice that I cannot buy anything from the grocery store without referring to the nutrition label (not that it has stopped me too much from buying high calorie stuff - I just feel a little bit more guilty before eating it happily - that's all :-D).

Even more surprising was that my roomies would set off on most weekday evenings to the university recreational hall for gymming! And for the first time, it struck me - gyms are something more than just cinema props. Just to figure out what the fuss was all about, I started putting in some time there too. Not too frequently but at least fairly regularly. Basically, enough effort to make friends and family to tell me that I had lost weight when I visited India and make me tons of delicious dishes to fatten me up again :-D! All the time I was in Davis, I took up some form of physical activity or the other to offset the effects of putting in long hours at the lab.

Then I moved from Davis. The first few months, taking public transportation, walking to the library, shopping and the like constituted the major chunk of my "exercise". Then I moved apartments. My new roomie, A (who is a good friend from my Davis days) and I started regular, almost everyday, tennis-playing sessions in our apartment complex's sole tennis court. After three months of regular play, we probably inspired too many other residents to get active too. For, we no longer found the court empty when we returned from work :-(. Sigh! So that was the end of that fitness stint.

After a winter filled with vacationing and lots of eating out, it looked like the next India trip would result in family and friends exclaiming upon the effects of living in a "rich" country. Time to get a fitness plan again. I noticed that fitness classes were offered by the local community center.

Both A and me registered. I registered for 2 classes per week while A, since she was getting married later that year, decided to register for four classes a week (in an effort to get that model-like figure ASAP :-))! The first class happened on a Tuesday. We did a lot of lunges, squats and other exercises with weights. I could not believe that exercises could be so tough! Needless to say, I ambled like a duck for the rest of the week (the Thursday class, though slightly less tough, only served to increase my soreness). Mercifully, I soon figured that as long as I was regular to the classes, they became easier on my poor muscles.

Now its been more than a year since I started going for those fitness classes. People tell me that I am in good shape these days - some days I realize that for myself. Even then, sometimes it is a big pain to drag myself to those classes after a hard day at work. However, now I seem to be in a trap - I don't seem to be able to stop myself from going! But the rush of good feeling (and discernable long term results :-)) I get whenever I complete a class, no matter how reluctant I was to get to it, makes it all worthwhile I guess!

* knees track your toes is my Fitness instructor's most repeated instruction when we squat :-D!