Gym pori Gym! :D

one of the main attractions of my current Chennai life is by the name of pink- the 'wonnly ladies' gym which I have recently joined. It's my third gym in last 4 years, but that is because it is the third city that I am leaving in, in last four years. the previous one, named cloud nine was in Mumbai, and it was my first experience of an AC gym, operating in confined spaces. Chennai is no better with respect to AC gyms, (well, AC is the basic necessity for any gym in cities like Mumbai or Chennai!) but it fares better in lot of other areas, and it fares super amusing in couple of other things too.
To start with, it is only ladies gym. you know, it was kind of a necessary thing, or lets say it was 'in' to go to a women's gym (or health club, precisely) in the days of my mom. She herself went to one of such aerobic classes for some years. But my generation, who usually does not believe in this kind of separation of the sexes, is used to unisex gyms, with probably reserved timings for ladies. Both my earlier gyms were unisex, and hence there was a lot of population sweating around, trying to build six packs, showing their biceps in extra tight T shirts and smelling a bit like pigs! Pink is totally different. women do not do heavy machine crunching and bicep building, do not make funny sounds while lifting super heavy weights, and certainly do not smell like pigs, they go for fancy De-os and perfumes instead.

as it suggests from the name, it is an out and out female gym, with instructors wearing pink T shirts, and nicely supervising the clients, and instructing the extra heavy aunties. Oh yes, the percentage of extra heavy aunties is much more over here. and that's not a very good point so to say. I guess the aunties are probably too shy to go to a unisex gym in a unisex timing, and hence i never spotted so many of the lot in both my previous gyms.here they move around freely, have a nice conversation with the fellow dieters and also, share an elderly advice with the young instructors!

there are so many colors in the whole gym environment, with lot of pictures on the walls, the colorful charts decked in front of our treadmills, nicely patterned curtains,  the pink instructors, and the multicolor costumes that clients themselves were. and you have to give it to me. how often would you find gym clients,particularly the bicep building lot,  dressed in anything from florescent blue to bright golden?! women do it, and it adds to the overall brightness of the gym, resulting in probably the brighter mood of clients during and post workouts. And to top it all, probably because its a women's gym, there is also a winner recipe of the week, this weeks being batataa poha :)

of course, this gym has certain things which I am finding super amusing. (It seems that Chennai has a thing for gyms named after colors. there is a gym in the next lane which is named purple :D) well, to start with, the instructors all wear bindi( tikli), and have long locks. No offense, but i think it does not go with the track pants and bright pink t shirts that they wear. but it being in Chennai, I will probably give it to them. more interestingly, all the instructors and most of the gym clients look at me with utmost disbelief/ disapproval/anger that I do not wear a bindi, earrings, bangles, bracelet, long locks, flowers in my hair, necklace,chain or even Mangalsutra, ever. that's quite a crime in their books, but so be it. I guess they still have tough time getting used to public like me. ( i was happy when I saw a young lady, exactly like me in the gym, wearing tracks and T shirts and totally ornament less :P)
Also, they, as a rule, play only Tamil songs. the songs being played are very hip, modern and popular in the crowd. but I usually get a couple of word out of the 500 being played. the only song which I knew in one hour was kolaveri Di, and that had some Tamil words, so it qualified. I felt so  soup! sigh sigh!
 well, just wrote about the early days. the grass might not be so green,( and as i start understanding Tamil, the yellowness of grass will reduce! :p) but picture to abhi baki hai mere dost! Gym pori gym till then!