Dorky Guffaw's Body-Building Adventures

Dorky Guffaw is back, snorting away to glory, after a prolonged hiatus on this blog, and this post is centered around the reason behind his extended break from frequently occuring misadventures.

For those who have been following Hindi movies closely for a decade or so now, a certain Hrithik Roshan would be no stranger to you. He made his debut on screen with a big bang, courtesy of this movie - Kaho Na Pyar Hai, and with some super dance moves, good screen presence and a fully muscled hulk-like body and clothes that accompanied it, which accentuated said muscles, he revolutionized the way in which the average Indian male film-goer wanted to emulate his favourite actor.

This was preceeded by Salman Khan's shirt-off song, where he 'plays the guitar' as well as George W Bush could play peace-maker, and with Bollywood being so liberal about men being shirtless, it was only a matter of time before this trickle of thought percolated into the confines of the average guy's mind.

Gyms became the next big place for people to go to, once they figured out that it was no longer cool to sport unkempt beards or hairstyles, and wear shirts with big collars and bell bottom pants and eve-tease college going women standing at bus shelters all day long.

Instead, it was now cool to zip around on bikes, wearing cooling glasses, sporting tattoos and wearing t shirts that one wore in class 7, if one wasn't solvent enough to purchase a tight t-shirt of the same size in the present day.

Aside from the material purchases involved in the new cool look, there was also this small matter of beefing up, and gyms were the new place to head out to, and men between the ages 17 and 30 all over India that fell in the 'wanting to be cool no matter what it takes' category were now discussing things like bench presses, protein shakes, tricep and bicep work outs and were, for a change discussing their own body parts along with corresponding dimensions and leaving women alone for atleast some points of time during their day, much to the latter group's relief.

In this mêlée, one might wonder where Dorky would feature, considering he was as distanced from the entire 'cool' phenomenon as was boiling water or Jennifer Love Hewitt in a bikini.

As a pertinent aside, Dr.Rajendra Pachauri and Al Gore have unleashed a secret fatwa on Jennifer Love Hewitt for being so hot that she's apparently one of the individuals that has caused the most melting per-square meter of the polar ice caps, and is rivalled only by big firms such as Conoco, Haliburton, the collective emissions of Bangalore traffic and Seattle's Hempfest in raising average temperatures worldwide.

So, if you live on the coast (some coast, any coast) and rising water levels cause your house to be flooded forever, you know who to blame. The entire population of Maldives has been unsuccessfully trying to get in touch with said hot actress so she can take them in as refugees in her house once their nation ceases to exist.

Dorky was uncool (still is) in every sense of the word, but sometimes, an absolute lack of anything fruitful to do drives people to do the craziest of things and hence Dorky took the plunge and following campus placements at the end of his sixth semester in engineering college, went ahead and joined a gym, which was almost ten kilometres from his house.

This was as sane a move as Muhammed Bin Tughlaq wanting to move the capital of India from Delhi to Devagiri a.k.a Daulatabad, and look where that got him!

Yes, he was stupid. If you've not had this thought in your mind, chances are, YOU're stupid.

To reinforce his complete lack of intelligence, Dorky used to cycle to his gym and back, and still perform the warm up exercises and run on the treadmill before commencing his weight training. His gym coach also instructed him to have protein supplements, something Dorky's Mum was not entirely sanguine about. Dorky had a swollen head despite possessing limited mental faculties, and it was quite scary to imagine how much more his ego would bloat, with his muscles experiencing a few mm growth.

This entire exercise, or set of exercises in late 2003 and early 2004 led Dorky to arrive at one conclusion. He might've climbed the highest mountain, or swum the deepest sea, but there was no chance in hell for him to actually rid himself of his congenital skinny frame. Eating six meals a day, working out and putting in multi-pronged efforts seemed to bear no fruit.

Secretly though, one would surmise that Dorky harboured such aspirations, like the average malnourished men, simply based on the before and after snaps shown of Hrithik Roshan, who'd been as skinny as Dorky was before he engaged on his body building spree.

Fact of the matter is, Dorky's before and after pic look the same - only his hair had grown because he had no money to go to the barbershop, having spent it all on protein supplements that tasted quite yucky despite allegedly having a 'chocolate' flavour.

Cut to 2008 when the whole gymming fad in Dorky's mind had a resurrection, this time because he wanted to be in decent shape, stamina-wise before he purchased his bicycle, that he plans to use to commute to work on a daily basis. An increase in age has only addled his brain further.

This new gym he used to frequent was appropriately named 'Physique', and the gym instructor there seemed friendly initially, and instructed him on his exercise and his diet.

However, Dorky, who's quite enthusiastic about all the pies he puts his fingers into, especially if he's made an investment in them (the gym charged him a fee for using their equipment, of course) was initially gung-ho about his gymming endeavours. He'd wake up early every morning, wear his tracks, jog to the gym and work out sincerely, his ipod plugged into his ears, as he faithfully went about the process of building up his stamina.

This went on for a couple of days, following which he had to miss going to the gym due to unavoidable circumstances. On his return to gym after that brief period of absence, the gym instructor, who has the funniest beard that Dorky has ever seen in his entire life, and it reminded him of the movie 'Signs', for it looked like crop circles on someone's face.

Crop circles on face guy then proceeded to interrogate Dorky on the reason for his absence, and asked him what he'd eaten over the past few days. Seeing no reason to get exasperated, Dorky gave him the required answers, only to be confronted with 'What are you eating?' on a daily basis.

It irked Dorky no end that, aside from putting up with other fellow people in the gym, whose narcissistic tendencies which included working out for thirty seconds and staring into the mirror flexing their muscles for the remaining thirty minutes, he'd also have to put up with answering the same questions day in and day out.

To further compound his misery, the 'changing room' in the gym where people used to deposit their sweat shirts smelt so bad that it made a public urinal smell like a Chanel outlet by comparison.

A combination of all these factors, coupled with NFS (Need for Sleep) made Dorky take the decision to give up on gymming, until the next big need to go ahead and work out would take centerstage in his mind.

Dorky's couple of kilos that were built up as a result of his trying to lift weights were shed as soon as he stopped working out, and he's now back to the frame he's possessed ever since class 10, concave stomach and all.

The only bright side to having hit the gym is that his arms have now grown longer, once again due to a combination of gravity and heavy weights, and his attempts at trying to lift them haven't gone in vain, as he can now touch his ankles while keeping his back straight.