Any guys that go to the gym as regularly as I do can attest to the fact that the aerobics room is always beyond reach. You CAN’T go in and participate because then the muscle bound guys outside won’t ever look you in the eyes again. You also have to purchase an extremely unflattering spandex outfit to enter. And yet… you long to be part of a place with such a favorable girl-to-guy ratio. You would be like a lion running free through a savannah of gazelles. Is there no hope? The San Jose Mercury News gives me hope:

Jane Fonda in a leotard and leg warmers super-charged the aerobics field in the 1980s.

Now, some unlikely candidates have arrived to lay claim to the throne the Hollywood icon abandoned almost 25 years ago. Two California sisters, Sheila and Sarina Jain, whose family hails from Rajasthan, India, are billing themselves as the “Indian Jane Fondas.”

Sheila, 28, of San Francisco, teaches around the Bay Area. Sarina, 29, moved to New York City to strike it big. Together, they are changing the international aerobics landscape with a pioneering and patented Indian aerobic dance routine, called Masala Bhangra Workout. Their fourth exercise DVD has just been released, and they recently have signed a contract for international distribution.

Masala means “spicy” in Hindi. Bhangra is a traditional harvest dance from northern India. Together, the popular routine is helping introduce Indian culture through exercise, and enticing those from the subcontinent to put down the greasy samosas and skip to the right, hop, hop, hop. Circle to the left, circle to the right. Knees up. Knees up.

The Jain sisters’ exercise routine is not for the faint of heart. And it’s certainly not for the uncoordinated. In some ways, it’s all about the head. It must constantly bob, side to side, to the beat of an Indian dhol drum.

“Just go to an Indian party and shake your head. You’ll look sooooo cool,” Jain shouted recently to a crowd of about 150 sweaty aerobicizers at her popular University of California-Berkeley session.

I personally suck at Bhangra so I hope they start these classes down in LA. Every time I am at a Bhangra party I don’t look cool. I start saying “doorknob, light-bulb, doorknob, light-bulb,” really loud as girls look at me strangely. A friend once taught me that the best way to do Bhangra is to pretend you are turning a doorknob with one hand and screwing in a light-bulb with the other. What do you want from me? I am Guju. Although I suck at garba too.

There are a handful of other Indian aerobics instructors nationwide, such as Vicki Virk of Dholrhythms, who teaches a form of bhangra aerobics around the Bay Area. And there’s Honey Kalaria, a popular dance instructor in England who leads Bollywood-style workouts mixed with bhangra and Hindi dancing.

But the Jain sisters are among the first, launching Masala Bhangra five years ago. The workout is the culmination of their teenage years, when they taught mainstream aerobics at a recreation center in Orange County, and danced in bhangra competitions organized by a family friend.

Then in 1994, their father, at age 47, died of heart disease — a common ailment in the Indo-American community, whose diet is rich in cheese, cream and butter. If he had exercised more, would he have lived a longer life? the sisters wondered. They started their business shortly after.

Update: I have been informed that my doorknob/lightbulb technique is quite well known and even gets a mention in the movie Bride and Prejudice. Truth is stranger than fiction.