Location: Tea Shop-Near Adda
____________________________________+
A beautiful Sunday evening. After a heavy lunch and a small nap, I came down the street to have a cup of hot coffee. The nap had done me no good. I felt more tired and goofy.
With the hot cup of steaming coffee in my hand, I was watching the kids play cricket at the nearby playground.
The coffee tasted good. Strong and with less sugar.
Wow!!
I felt a hand, grip my shoulder from behind. I turned around, to see my friend Ullas with his big smile. He had a packet in his hand.
Ullas: Hi
Me: Hey! Coming after a shopping I guess?
Ullas: Yeah.
Me: Tea or Coffee?
Ullas:Coffee….
* I ordered for another cup of coffee at the counter.
Me:[ Pointing to the packet in his hands]. What is it?
Ullas: Running Shoes.
Me: [With a frown] Okay! Planning to get married. .I guess. So soon?
Ullas: No yar. Planning to get some exercise. Got to cut some fat
[ He said pointing to his stomach.]
Me: Yeah ..right!I thought that’s muscles. Seriously. You have gained some weight in the last few months and its all showing in the middle. Too bad.
[ I frowned]
Ullas: You wanna join me tomorrow morning?
Me: Tomorrow? [Pointing to the packet in his hands] err…I don’t have those.
*Phew…!!. That was close. I bow before my brain cells which came up with a good excuse to bail out of a situation.
____________________________________+
Location: The Restaurant
I was sitting with three of my buddies. Ullas, Sushanth whom we call Sush and Sanoop.
I ordered for a well balanced diet comprising of dosa, veg curry and chicken masala.
Ullas broke the silence.
Ullas: So! Who are all with me tomorrow?
Me: For what?
Sanoop: The running thing ..The early morning jog.
Sush: Tomorrow is Monday, let’s start it on Tuesday.
Evil things happen to people who wake up early on Mondays.
* I saw a little devil, standing on the shoulders of Sush and whispering something in his ears. The devil looked like a miniature me.
Ullas: No. Tomorrow means tomorrow.
Sanoop: I don’t know. I have to wake up early.Right? and Monday………….
Me:[Laughing] Yeah! you have to wake up, early in the morning and for that you have to go to sleep early, giving a miss to those late night block buster movies.
* I was contributing my, constructive ideas for these kids, to help them in their decision making process.
Me: No pain…No gain. [ I added my punch line]
I looked at Ullas.
Ullas: Yeah He is right. No pain..No Gain. See…..[ The lecture begins]
Ullas: See.. We don’t get enough exercise everyday because we lead a very comfortable life.
Me:[Thinking].Yeah right mister Inventor.
* As a gesture of appreciation for his new theory, I filled his glass with hot water.
This dinner is gonna last a bit longer than usual.
As if Sanoop read my mind and the fact behind me filling up his glass. He winked at me and I winked back.
Ullas: You know! The cab picks us up and drop us back. We don’t get exercise like walking to office or while coming back from office.
Me:[Thinking]…. Yes! Slaves should arrive on time, and long back, they were chained together and made to walk all the way to the Egyptian desert to build pyramids. Lucky they don’t do that now. How embarrassing it would be.
Thinking about boarding a BMTC bus. That itself is a good exercise. First you have to sprint behind the bus with your backpack with heavy reference manuals, may be your laptop and associated items for a few meters or yards or miles and chase them down.
This means a good exercise for your thighs and calf muscles.
Climbing into the moving bus itself puts us in a fair deal of acrobatics.
For that you will have to leap into any empty space inside the bus. Here the hand eye coordination comes into play. The leap should avoid the iron bar in the middle and you have to time your hold with relation to the movement of the bus. Then you have to hoist yourself into the bus, before the door snaps shut, meaning you exert all your energy to push yourself forward and hoist yourself up. This gives exercise to your arm muscles. The forearm muscles basically.
Then you have to inch your way, to the inside of the bus. This increases the ability of your body to be more flexible and squeeze into the minimum available space.
A metaphor would be like packing your heavy luggage for a long vacation and you want to travel light.
This exercise improves your abdomen muscles and help gain strength to the muscles on the both sides of your stomach.
Now more benefits.
Lucky you. The bus you boarded can be over crowded, that means you will have to hang on the bars [Excuse me. BMTC buses don’t come with pubs attached. I was referring to the iron bars ] all the way there by helping your shoulder muscles and muscles in forearms again.
This is an exercise to improve your wings or grow wings. Without Red Bull.
*Punch Line: Blue Bus gives me Weengs….: Blue Bus gives me Weengs….
If the person standing next to you had a bath in the morning in alcohol or is wearing the pungent smelling [ Ref:12th Chemistry lab manual] deo or perfume that could split your skull into two and make the sensitive olfactory bulb inside your nose fuse or the having Body Odour [B.O] of a BMP truck you are incredibly lucky, because your lungs get the exercise. The air holding capacity of the lungs is improved many times the average person or of gym goers.
This air holding exercise improves your health from the inside. No need to go for swimming. You would wish, you need one, after you reach your destination.
The persons embarking and disembarking the bus can give you good foot massage, revitalizing the pressure points on your foot and legs and knees etc. The whole lower body gets a good massage. This massage is also free of cost or at least at the cost of your bus ticket.
The instructor (Conductor) can make you do monkey bars inside the moving bus and you learn to dodge the conductor. This ladies and gentlemen is called ‘Dodge the Conductor’ training program.
This program improves your spinal cord’s ability to stabilize your body in very Zero Gravity conditions to hyper G conditions.
The next exercise you are made to do is the ‘Balancing Act’. As such this is an art form gaining too much popularity with the masses. Even NASA has shown interest in this art form for its space explorers.
This exercise means suspending your body between 2 individuals [Note: These two individuals are also suspended in Zero Gravity conditions. Gravity does exist but we are time traveling and in such cases gravity is No Longer Factor-NLF]
Then you have to lean yourself to the nearest handrail or the pole and get your purse out for the bus pass or to pay for the ticket.
This ‘Balancing Act’ helps your body’s response system to adapt even to small disturbances in the environment. Every tiny muscle in your body like the facial muscles the gums of your teeth etc is given a large workout during this maneuver.
This also has psychological advantages too. When the bus you are traveling suddenly breaks a feeling of euphoria passé through you. This excitement can flush away all your then worries.
If you are fortunate enough not to have enough currency change with you or a valid bus pass, you are lucky enough to receive exercise to your ear muscles. You would wish, your ear had flaps or blame the evolution for making the ear muscles vestigial.
The early morning curses are a real treat. This takes away your office blues. Nothing more can worsen your day any further.
This is the ultimate exercise- In response to the conductor’s poetic words the only thing you can move is your eye balls and tongue.[ If the lung permits you can try to speak, you can make some moans or ultra low frequency sound. Under normal circumstances you would be gasping for breathe or words.]
This exercise gives enough exercise to tongue and eyeballs.
The driver guy can take you on a roller coaster ride. Speeding, breaking, and turning rapidly. This adds no extra tax to your ticket. The cost for this show along with entertainment tax is paid by you in your last birth.
If the bus you are traveling has an FM radio Channel kept on at full blast you will surely have the heavens when your soul departs.
“There is no 2 continuous terms in hell” says the religious texts.
Now you are about to reach your destination.
You wrestle your way through the stack of vertical human bodies and reach the door of the bus. You feel all worked out. Every inch of your body is in pain. The same experience of spending around 2+ hours in gym, pumping iron.
You are sweating. You don’t feel a thing from waist down. You look down to your legs to make sure its still there.
As the bus slows down your face shows and ‘auto-grin’ by default.
The door opens and you jump out.
You walk down the street in a funny sort of way, as the astronauts walk on moon or you just came back from there.
Your legs itch, the feel of blood flowing back to the veins.
Once again you feel, the fresh carbon filled air. The warmth of auto exhaust that surrounds you. The chirping of horns and sirens. The street dogs, the panwala, the rigged meter wala Auto wala.
You are alive, you are alive….
You smile, suppressing hard, the urge to have a good laugh at your success in making it back from the bus alive and in one piece.
Thinking about boarding a BMTC bus. That itself is a good exercise. First you have to sprint behind the bus with your backpack with heavy reference manuals, may be your laptop and associated items for a few meters or yards or miles and chase them down.
This means a good exercise for your thighs and calf muscles.
Climbing into the moving bus itself puts us in a fair deal of acrobatics.
For that you will have to leap into any empty space inside the bus. Here the hand eye coordination comes into play. The leap should avoid the iron bar in the middle and you have to time your hold with relation to the movement of the bus. Then you have to hoist yourself into the bus, before the door snaps shut, meaning you exert all your energy to push yourself forward and hoist yourself up. This gives exercise to your arm muscles. The forearm muscles basically.
Then you have to inch your way, to the inside of the bus. This increases the ability of your body to be more flexible and squeeze into the minimum available space.
A metaphor would be like packing your heavy luggage for a long vacation and you want to travel light.
This exercise improves your abdomen muscles and help gain strength to the muscles on the both sides of your stomach.
Now more benefits.
Lucky you. The bus you boarded can be over crowded, that means you will have to hang on the bars [Excuse me. BMTC buses don’t come with pubs attached. I was referring to the iron bars ] all the way there by helping your shoulder muscles and muscles in forearms again.
This is an exercise to improve your wings or grow wings. Without Red Bull.
*Punch Line: Blue Bus gives me Weengs….: Blue Bus gives me Weengs….
If the person standing next to you had a bath in the morning in alcohol or is wearing the pungent smelling [ Ref:12th Chemistry lab manual] deo or perfume that could split your skull into two and make the sensitive olfactory bulb inside your nose fuse or the having Body Odour [B.O] of a BMP truck you are incredibly lucky, because your lungs get the exercise. The air holding capacity of the lungs is improved many times the average person or of gym goers.
This air holding exercise improves your health from the inside. No need to go for swimming. You would wish, you need one, after you reach your destination.
The persons embarking and disembarking the bus can give you good foot massage, revitalizing the pressure points on your foot and legs and knees etc. The whole lower body gets a good massage. This massage is also free of cost or at least at the cost of your bus ticket.
The instructor (Conductor) can make you do monkey bars inside the moving bus and you learn to dodge the conductor. This ladies and gentlemen is called ‘Dodge the Conductor’ training program.
This program improves your spinal cord’s ability to stabilize your body in very Zero Gravity conditions to hyper G conditions.
The next exercise you are made to do is the ‘Balancing Act’. As such this is an art form gaining too much popularity with the masses. Even NASA has shown interest in this art form for its space explorers.
This exercise means suspending your body between 2 individuals [Note: These two individuals are also suspended in Zero Gravity conditions. Gravity does exist but we are time traveling and in such cases gravity is No Longer Factor-NLF]
Then you have to lean yourself to the nearest handrail or the pole and get your purse out for the bus pass or to pay for the ticket.
This ‘Balancing Act’ helps your body’s response system to adapt even to small disturbances in the environment. Every tiny muscle in your body like the facial muscles the gums of your teeth etc is given a large workout during this maneuver.
This also has psychological advantages too. When the bus you are traveling suddenly breaks a feeling of euphoria passé through you. This excitement can flush away all your then worries.
If you are fortunate enough not to have enough currency change with you or a valid bus pass, you are lucky enough to receive exercise to your ear muscles. You would wish, your ear had flaps or blame the evolution for making the ear muscles vestigial.
The early morning curses are a real treat. This takes away your office blues. Nothing more can worsen your day any further.
This is the ultimate exercise- In response to the conductor’s poetic words the only thing you can move is your eye balls and tongue.[ If the lung permits you can try to speak, you can make some moans or ultra low frequency sound. Under normal circumstances you would be gasping for breathe or words.]
This exercise gives enough exercise to tongue and eyeballs.
The driver guy can take you on a roller coaster ride. Speeding, breaking, and turning rapidly. This adds no extra tax to your ticket. The cost for this show along with entertainment tax is paid by you in your last birth.
If the bus you are traveling has an FM radio Channel kept on at full blast you will surely have the heavens when your soul departs.
“There is no 2 continuous terms in hell” says the religious texts.
Now you are about to reach your destination.
You wrestle your way through the stack of vertical human bodies and reach the door of the bus. You feel all worked out. Every inch of your body is in pain. The same experience of spending around 2+ hours in gym, pumping iron.
You are sweating. You don’t feel a thing from waist down. You look down to your legs to make sure its still there.
As the bus slows down your face shows and ‘auto-grin’ by default.
The door opens and you jump out.
You walk down the street in a funny sort of way, as the astronauts walk on moon or you just came back from there.
Your legs itch, the feel of blood flowing back to the veins.
Once again you feel, the fresh carbon filled air. The warmth of auto exhaust that surrounds you. The chirping of horns and sirens. The street dogs, the panwala, the rigged meter wala Auto wala.
You are alive, you are alive….
You smile, suppressing hard, the urge to have a good laugh at your success in making it back from the bus alive and in one piece.
“Bus Goers are better than Gym Goers”- Sorcerer
_______________________________+
Ullas:[ Touching my hands. ] Are you listening?
Me:Yeah yeah! I missed a few points. No worries. Continue.
Ullas: [Pointing to the chicken in my plate] What is that?
* He want my attention and I am gonna give him all I got.
Me: It’s a chicken. To put it correctly, pieces of chicken.
Ullas: What exactly is that?
Me: I can’t figure out where that part you are pointing belongs to. But let me be brief you this way. A chicken, a beautiful one may be, killed, stripped of its beautiful feathers and skin and made naked, then chopped to eatable pieces, washed and with the best of my information from the F.I.R from my taste buds; its treated with spices and essential items and may be a bit of food color to make it look this cool and deep fried in some cheap oil from a local brand. Decorated with onions and piece of lime and mint leaves. This is how they honor the dead chicken with onions, lemon and mint leaves . This tradition varies from place to place or from hotel to hotel.
[ I replied like an army commander briefing his troops, with a nullified facial expression.]
[Laughs in the background. Lead laugh Sanoop.]
Ullas: No.
Me: No?
Ullas: That is Fat.
Me: No way .This is not. This is a lean chicken. Hardly any meat on it. Duh! I have to pay full price for half the quantity.
[ I replied pointing to the bare bone]
Me: This chicken must be like you, health conscious and on a diet.
Ullas: See man. That fat can give you a heart attack
Me: Yeah! Read it in newspapers. [I replied with a frown.]
Ullas: The arteries can get blocked by fat.
Me: Whateries?.Okay..continue
Ullas: For that you need to run and burn the fat and give your body some exercise. Give your body what it needs.
Me:Hmmm…
[What my body badly needs now is a pair of earplugs.]
Me: Yeah! Thanks for reminding me. I need to buy tooth paste.
Ullas :You coming tomorrow morning?
Me: Not really. I want to but I will join you in a few days time.
Ullas: Yar I need someone to accompany me.
Me: Escort?
Ullas:No man. Someone I can talk to while on the run.
Me: Call me up dude. Call me on the phone.I will talk to ya.I aint got ny to talk to.
Ullas: No yar..not like that.
Me:See, I fully understand. See give me a few days time and I will run with you for sure.
Ullas: Wow! That would be fun.
Me: Yeah! Yeah (evil grin)
Ullas: Sanoop are you in?
Sanoop: I need to rethink on my schedules.
*Sush was on phone.So no ‘Roger’ on that.
_______________________________+
While we were leaving
Ullas: So you are not coming tomorrow?
Me: I said after a few days. Don’t push me too hard or I will try my workout at Blue Bus.
Sanoop: Now I know why you were ‘out of range’ when having food. You were thinking of the travel in the bus right? Aint ya?.Me too in a way.
Me: Yeah!
..
..
He could read my mind. Dork!
_______________________________+
