As I pen this column, I feel as though there is a little carpenter sitting at the base of my spine, hammering away at it with a rather unnecessary enthusiasm. It hurts to sit, to move, to walk, to cough—yes, I have been injured, yet again. Now I do know that injury is a part of any active person’s life but when that active person is also overenthusiastic, scatty and clumsy, it does mean injury isn’t just likely, it is almost inevitable.
I don’t remember a time when moving my body didn’t cause me to get injured. Since I was too overweight to run in school, I never represented my house, let alone my school, at any athletic event. Sports days were a blissful picnic: I spent them behind a bush with a large bag of crisps and a nice book. So I stayed injury-free for most of my fledgling years. Except, maybe, for the time I tried to catch and beat up someone who called me, “Fatty” and tried to cycle away. When I grasped the back of his bike, he pedalled even faster, taking his wiry young frame and three layers of the skin of my left hand away with him (the mud guard scraped it off). But this doesn’t count, of course.
In my late teens, I discovered this serial called Xena, Warrior Princess, eponymously named after its central character, a sword-touting, leather-and-brass-clad brunette who saved nations, rode unfettered across rolling landscape and had an occasional roll-in-the-hay with a delicious-looking Ares, God of War. I fell very hard for Ares. He was all that a 16-year-old longed for: think bedroom eyes, massive arms, husky voice, appealingly hirsute and the proud possessor of a pair of very tight pants that left little (or too much) to the imagination.
Now Ares hung out only with warriors, so I decided that I wanted to become one too.
Enter the karate elective in college. We were taught by an overenthusiastic gent — also hirsute, tight-panted and massive-armed, but unfortunately not as appealing as the aforementioned Ares, who came up with the brilliant idea of engaging his class by introducing weaponry to a bunch of white-belted (beginners are usually never given weapons) bored teens. Ten minutes into the class, and I was whacked by a nunchaku and obtained a spectacular black-eye that hung around for nearly two months. “You should try swimming instead,” said my doctor-uncle who treated me on that occasion.
Then there was the time I tried to run a 10 k in 10 days, I was hobbling by the third. Then came yoga — not the slow, sedate sort, but an intense avatar: Ashtanga Yoga, replete with somersaults, deep drop-backs and jumps. “It is what Madonna does,” I would say airily, ignoring all the aches and niggles that had crept in. A big mistake. One day my back simply gave way and I was bed-bound for a week, followed by hours of physical therapy.
Discretion may be the better part of valour, but I never seem to learn. Scrapes, bruises, back pulls, achy knee, wonky shoulder, swollen fingers and a dreadfully wounded ego have been my constant companions for decades now.
But stop, I cannot. The hour or so I spend in the gym, a class or park is possibly my favorite part of the day — it is the least complicated way of getting a daily dose of sweat, endorphins and sheer joy. I am wont to agree with Murakami on this one (he meant running, but it could extend to any form of movement, I think). "When I'm running I don't have to talk to anybody and don't have to listen to anybody. This is a part of my day I can't do without."
