The Health Nuts

Every morning an over-enthusiastic young mynah, chirping to its mate, tries to wake up our
locality. But for sleepyheads like me, the attempts of the mynah are too feeble to rouse us up.
For such slumber lovers, we have a much stronger alarm clock – a burst of laughter. It brings
the necessary human touch (now don’t tell me you thought some mynahs laughed), and is
extremely effective as far as volume is concerned. And so you must be wondering who the
owner(s) of the voice(s) are, well… a group of wrinkled and retired, but, eager and energetic
‘dadu’s. Dadu is how most Bengali kids refer to their grandfathers, but an imagery will help
you understand our fervent dadus better. So, just visualize your grandpa hopping out of his
rocking chair, putting aside the creased newspaper that he has read at least thrice, and
jumping into a pair of sweatpants, discarding his starchy white pyjamas for a change. Too
tough to imagine? Ok, here is just a bit more, the blistered leather chappals give way to a
flashy pair of neon sneakers as your grandpa rushes down to join his peers for a fine warm up
and the concluding therapeutic laugh.

And so, a bunch of dadus, too young to be old, assume their health nut avatars every
morning, before going back to their newspapers, Bangla soaps and grandkids who are
desperately in need of a horror story.

Gazing from the balcony, I see a geometrically perfect circle on our lawn, composed of dadus
along the circumference, doing some vigorous warm up. Each dadu has a designated place
that is cast in stone. Even when the lawn is wet after a rainy night, and just two dadus are
present, they are ready to stand half a meter away from each other… just for the sake of not
breaking rules. The warm up ends with the dadus turning their heads in infinite number of
‘o’s, with their eyes shut in a meditative posture. This is followed by a hearty clapping of
palms and wrists, fingers and fists(just in case you were wondering, they are all pretty clap-
able). The session comes to an end with the dadus laughing in degrees of varying intensities,
in unison. This can often be eerie for first time onlookers, but for regular audiences(and I can
assure you there are at least ten), this audio-visual performance is pretty entertaining,
something that is evident from their regularity in attendance. The roaring laughter is always
followed by a gurgle, an amused chuckle, and finally a couple of giggles. What follows next
are hiccups, as if chocked by laughter. This animated physicality can be considered the finale
of this live performance.
I will like to thank all my beloved dadus, from the core of my heart for being the pioneers of
health consciousness in our locality.

Pioneers?...that’s right, this ‘stimulus’ caused a ‘ripple effect’ as my sociologist aunt would
later explain, and soon two more such groups emerged.

One such group was formed by four techy men, in their early fifties. Each of them, sprouting
a huge paunch (which perhaps justifies their need for health consciousness), equipped with
Fitbits, JBL speakers and insulating yoga mats, comes downstairs every morning at 6:30 am
and religiously meditates and works out. Thanks to these men, we had three work-out
equipments installed in what was previously a park for kids. These rides-for-adults converted
the park into an “open-air gym”, something that has been used by almost all the residents of
our locality ever since their instalment.

This year we even had a World Yoga Day celebration in our locality, courtesy – the Gen X
team. This “celebration”, attracted many not-so-health-enthusiastic people, such as my
mother, who rushed down confidently with a faded bedsheet. Later, upon observing from the
balcony, I realised that my mother’s bedsheet was at least seating six people from her kitty-
party circle. She came back home, an hour later, beaming with pride, as she produced a
boiled egg, a banana, an apple and a not so healthy slice of chocolate cake. These were
apparently distributed to all the participants to promote healthy eating habits, but I personally
felt the delectable cake was only a bait to manipulate kids and teens from taking part in this
“not-so-trendy” event, from next year onwards.

Back to Boomers. The didas of our locality - the dadus’ better halves, formed another group.
During their husbands’ joint morning ritual, they remain too busy in the kitchens, to come
downstairs. And therefore, the dida clan comes down in the evening. While sitting on a park
bench with my gang, I spot Banerjee dida and Chatterjee dida twisting as they discuss their
respective dinner menus. Noticing us, they smile welcomingly and ask us to join them.
Smiling awkwardly, we blame our innocent schools for “too much homework” and run away.

Health consciousness and enthusiasm has been taken to a whole new level by our locality,
with the instalment of bright lights that are capable of lighting up the open-air gym, 24 x 7.

At midnight, my insomnia takes me to the balcony. I spot the bald-headed man who has
perennially been in some quarrel or the other with the rest of the society, over serious issues
such as the number of puris that should be served for breakfast during Durga Pujo, robustly
paddling away on the elliptical cross trainer. He looks around to cross-check if anyone is
around and continues paddling.

The health nuts finally make me go nuts!