Palavakkam, known for its bustling adjoint IT parks and traffic, is also now known for its rapidly increasing love for body building.
The Mr Tamil Nadu State Body Building Championship was held at Manuelmony Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Palavakkam. The idea was to promote the art of body sculpting among the residents, says S Kumarananthan, an ICF Body Building Coach, who is also the organiser. “This has been happening here for the last five years. People from across Chennai have been taking part.”
RL Thiruvengadam, the general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Body Building Association, says that there is a new-found craze for body building in Palavakkam. “You must be here to believe it. Around 1,000 spectators, including women and children, throng this place.”
Thanks to the IT park nearby, Palavakkam has developed in the last few years. Around 20 gyms have mushroomed here, including 10 which are specially meant for grooming people into body builders, says Thiruvengadam. “There were also young men from Nagapattinam, Madurai, Virudhunagar, Sivakasi, Salem and Coimbatore.”
Some of the contestants strayed into this field out of sheer will to fight obesity. For instance, all Karunakaran Natarajan, a 20-year-old Mechanical Engineering student of Agni College of Technology, wanted was to lose weight. It soon transformed into a passion for body building and before he knew it, he was participating in the Mr. Tamil Nadu State Body Building Championship at Palavakkam, where he won the sixth place.
Now that the body building bug has bitten him, he cannot help but dream big. “My aim is to win the Mr India and Mr Asia titles. I want to turn this (body building) into my full-time career,” he says. He adds that his friends in the gym, who kept encouraging him, were a big source of strength.
