Salil's Day 1 at the Gym

Author : Salil Prashar


Today after a hiatus of god knows how many days i finally joined a gym. I was putting off joining by reasoning that I required a break after my retirement, not that I had ever gone to any gym for the last many years........ But then what do these civilians know.

On entered the gym i was cornered by the owner and his first question was " what is your target?"

I was like... Target!! ..... Was his vision cataracted..... Couldn't he see my re-tyred body.... Anyways..... I pointed to the obvious and laid it out to him nice and simple.....


I was sent to the machines and told to warm up. I finished my warm up in 10 minutes and reported back to him, I guess his look of shock motivated me to go back and warm up some more.

I caught hold of him again and woe be me that I caught him! He nonchalantly told me that "now we will do some situps...."

"We!" or did he mean "only me"

So "We" started. He showed me what to do and told me to do 100 reps of that


A HUNDRED BLOODY REPS.....!!

100....!!

as in 99, 100...!!

Oye iss mein GST bhi lagaya hai kya....!!!

Had he not heard of standard deduction, csd rates and fauji concession.....!!


The look on my face got me a concession and he toned it down to 50 and went to the other room of the gym......

The NDA cadet in me suddenly woke up from the forgotten recesses of my brain and took over my body and mind..... I did only 30 reps,.... Let me rephrase it........ I COULD DO only 30 reps.

When mr fitness himself came back I told him "ho gaye", so he showed me the next exercise and asked me to do a hundred reps again discounted to 50...... This time i could reach 25 when mr fitness came back and asked "ho gaye", i said "nahin 5 more remaining" and i dutifully did 5 in front of him. After all, sincerity is a virtue which will get me places....

And the torture continued....... After a few 1000 reps (discounted and reduced adequately) I walked..... Sorry staggered back home.

As I reached the lift I remembered my early morning lecture to my wife to use the stairs after her morning walk as it was good for the heart..... and I reminded myself to keep my gyan to my own self the next time around and I finally took the elevator.

So here i am back home remembering Sydney Sheldon’s "if tomorrow comes" as I'll have to go back under command of mr fitness again

Stay with me for Day 2 at the gym

(I wrote this on 10/08/2017 and posted it on whatsapp groups, this was just after I had taken premature retirement from the Army and was settling down in civilian life)