On joining a gym, one goes through a physio check-up. This is a one-hour session with a person who is a fitness expert. His objective is to make you realize that with your current fitness level, you should have been dead 100 years ago.

I went through one such session last week. With Subash, expert physio , who has launched a 1000 muscles in his career so far.

Subhash greeted me with 500 muscles rippling through his shirt. If fitted with light-bulbs, they would go on and off like disco dance floor when he laughed. He asked me to showcase my flexibility. Now, I have a huge repertoire of actions to demonstrate my supple, limber and lithe powers, for example, blinking, wiggling my toes and tossing my hair. But Subhash had other plans – he wanted me to do squats. I gave him that withering look that normally, burns through fat content. But, as we know, Subhash is made up of muscles.

His eye-balls are also 100% muscle, 0% fat.

He then asked me to do push-ups, asking me if I knew what they were. I know what push-ups are: I watch Bigg Boss. I was annoyed with his statement. But, if he thought he’d trick me into doing push-ups by annoying me, he was a fat-head. I mean, muscle-head. This was the right moment to bring up my fractured wrist. I mean that wrist that potentially ‘could be’ fractured if I did push ups. Of course, there was no need to get into those kind of details. I held up my ‘fractured wrist’ in dainty, limp manner telling him that the ‘doctor’ had asked me not to strain it.

He then asked me to stand on that machine they call BCA – Body Composition Analyser. It’s a machine on which, the moment you stand, rolls out a rude statement on your fitness. They’d might as well add canned laughter to it. Mine had fat human figures drawn on it, with some random percentages scribbled across them.

Subhash fished out his most incredulous and unbelieving expression from his black book of ‘Rude Physio Expressions’ which is given to all Physios in their Induction Programs.

‘Look at this..’, he cried out.

‘Save me the melodrama’, I wanted to say.

But I played along.

‘What is it?’, I asked, showing appropriate concern and curiosity.

He was now enjoying it.

He went on to explain how unfit I was. Jargon after jargon, he went on and on. He was on a roll.

At the end of it, I sat down.

The data was clearly showing I should not be standing. I, possibly, should not have been breathing either. I made a mental note to write my will the same day.

After the analysis, Subhash took me to the gym. It was a wonderful moment. There was all kinds of fat people there. I looked reed(imagine a largish reed, maybe growing under-water, hence swollen)-thin. I was delighted. I stepped daintily of the treadmill, using my thin arms to adjust my tee shirt around my thin waist. The fat people groaned, almost audibly, and pedalled faster and faster.

This was the best part of the physio analysis : test of my pulse rate on the machines in this heaven of fat people.

Phew, finally the physio test was over and I could start my regime.

It’s been a good start so far.

I have cycled for 45 minutes today: Subhash has not noticed that I have reduced the ‘resistance level’ of the cycle. It was not at Level 4 as he had intended it to be. It is something like Level Minus 10 – that is where the pedals move on their own, and even massage your calves to apologize to the legs for the minor discomfort, even as they print out ‘Sorry’ cards.

Muaaaaaahhhhhhaaa (signing off with evil laughter).

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