Jupinderjit Singh
THE lotus pink tee she wore proved the proverbial last nail in the coffins of a number of us men in a gym at a club in Bathinda. Their hearts were already pierced with her impeccable beauty, a face as fresh as the first gush of a fountain up in the Himalayas. And the mole on the side of her right eye was nature's gift to keep the evil eyes away. To borrow from an Urdu couplet, it was a black commando posted to secure her painfully invaluable beauty.
It was a male-dominated gym. The men drawn from different professions usually went about their exercises quietly. Not much conversation happened between us.
Not much thought seemed to be given to the gym wear. Badly fitting T-shirts and un-matching socks worn in dusty shoes that didn't seem to be washed ever. Very few were regulars in the gym. At times, men stopped exercising and looked unashamedly at the TV screen perched high up in the hall. Scantily dressed models, dancers gyrating provocatively in lewd music videos were the focus.
And then she arrived bringing a new aura to the place stacked with lifeless ugly iron machines. The air-conditioners began re-circulating an aroma of freshly bloomed flowers instead of the nauseating foul smell of our sweat.
The gym began filling with more men, most of them twice her age during the one-hour which she trained. Those with pot bellies became conscious of their potato figure. They ran faster on the treadmill. Some doubled the crunches. Those lifting 20-25kg began trying 40-50kg and heavier plates.
All kept looking at her from the corners of their eyes while trying to evade staring directly at her. They sheepishly looked in another direction when she caught the person ogling.
The girl rarely smiled. And whenever she returned someone's smile, the guy was visibly on cloud nine. Men started wearing branded sportswear and came dripping with costly deos. Obscene songs on the only channel running on the TV were looked down upon. No one looked at the 'lowly' stuff.
As she left the hall for the day, it seemed the soul of the gym left the place. Men seemed in a hurry to finish the exercise and leave. A pall of gloom seemed to engulf all.
Then, one of us, who could not control himself any long, shared her admiration. Confessions outpoured. One had changed his routine to suit the training time of the girl. Another said he missed the last two days as he had pumped iron more than his capacity to endure, all for impressing her. If one learnt the prized info of her name, the other got to know where she lived. Everyday someone brought titbits of information about her.
She often took break of a day or two but when she didn't turn up for a week, there were worries all around. They all kept looking through the windows at the parking to spot her. Each of us had a different theory of her disappearance.
Soon, one by one, the men stopped coming. The gym became deserted. Being a crowd-hater, I was never comfortable with the swelling numbers but working on my abs and triceps alone was more unbearable. The muse of the ‘muscle-flinching’ poets had vanished.
key words : gym, muscles, poet, dunes club, bathinda, muse, love, mole on the face
link : http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140529/edit.htm#5
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