The Christian Science Monitor highlights the healthy goings on in Bangalore’s Cubbon Park. Apparently you can jog while sporting a Sari instead of FloJo-like spandex:
Many wear saris. Some don salwar kameezes, knee-length Indian tunics with loose pants. Others sport track pants and tees. One or two can’t leave their burqas behind for religious reasons. These women have come to a 300-acre wooded haven in the heart of congested Bangalore to walk and jog – minus any contour-hugging lycra or spandex.
The concern for modesty rubs off on men as well. They’re attired mostly in baggy shorts and tees, though some wear slacks. One or two are wrapped in an Indian white dhoti, the costume favored by Gandhi.
Jogging and walking are catching on in India, but few places can match the zeal and camaraderie found in Cubbon Park. In other parts of the world, fitness is a grueling, lonely experience, with i-Pods or perhaps a personal trainer for company. But here, there’s little that’s personal about personal fitness. Working out is an outing – with sons, uncles, brothers, grandmothers, husbands, wives, daughters, cousins, and family relations only Indians could invent.
This article really brings back some fond memories from when I visited India as a child. I’d go for a walk past some park with my mom or a relative in the wee hours of morning and see a bunch of middle aged men and women doing exercises. At the time I thought they acted “very strangely” and I’d ask my relatives if they were sure these were exercises. Well, to be honest I still think they are strange, but that of course is entirely from the perspective of a western gym rat. One thing never changes though no matter the situation. Indians are always up in your business.
Personal trainers seem redundant when everybody is interested in your absence yesterday and the pace of your exercise. “Why are you going so slowly?” one woman asks a man. Another comes to the sluggard’s defense: “It’s his second round, that’s why.”
Shutting oneself off with an i-Pod seems unthinkable. That might preempt possible romantic interludes, domestic exchanges, professional schmoozing, or just plain gossip.
And finally the paragraph that made this whole article worth it:
And then there are the women in saris. They don’t jog; they just walk briskly. But in one group, the women, clad in the six feet of flowing cloth that define a sari, bravely execute jumping jacks. “Their families are conservative and won’t let them wear anything else,” says Shanmugam, who is in track pants.
Wardrobe malfunctions seem imminent. But the ladies transcend their sartorial limitations, their tennis shoes flashing as they leap.
I feel a “Go on girl!” coming on.
Marathons are catching on in India too! Anil Ambani (of Reliance Industries) is a marathoner. And I just now read that the Mumbai Marathon had to stop taking entries because of unexpected demand. That’s so sweet.
Hmm, I wonder if anyone tried to do the Mumbai Marathon in slacks or a sari…
my father’s only sister, who is elder to him, ran a marathon almost a decade ago, when she was 70. she did it in the traditional two-piece white sari-like mundu set that good malayalee ammachis wear. oh, and she won.
Wow, I’m impressed. Do you remember which marathon she ran? I bet you she could have been Adidas’ next poster girl if she wanted to 🙂
I NEED to know this. What does mundu really mean? After hearing it refer to 5 different things in Jhankaar beats I’m thoroughly confused.
ANNA
I am impressed by your Aunt. But the Don and Godfather of grandparent hero’s is surely Sardarji Fauja Singh.
Ninety Three years old. What a gangster.
A ‘mundu’ is a piece of cloth wrapped around your waist. It’s different from a ‘lungi’ in that a lungi is colorful, and a mundu is white, with maybe a thin colored border. Only men wear a lungi, whereas in Kerala, a mundu is worn by men and women (in the case of the latter: the set-and-mundu, which Anna was referring to).
I remember seeing a television news article about some women in india diving for sponges in saris. What I think is curious is that women in India must wear a sari while doing anything including swimming and exercising and even sleeping but men can wear what ever is appropriate to what they are doing.
Women in India don’t HAVE to wear saris. In fact most young women don’t, except on special occasions. Several do.
These might lead you to think that men have to wear Paghris (Turbans) and kurtas. They wear whatever they want. We are not the taliban, you know. Considering that there’s 1 billion of us though, you’ll be able to find extremists if you want to.
My grandmother wears nine-yard saris made of silk, which make the ultimate pantsuits. Indian women did a lot of field work back in the day and couldn’t be bothered with pesky skirt saris.
A mundu is a dhoti/veshti the hem of which has been pulled up and tied around the waist to make a shorter “skirt.”
Wait – we don’t? Now you tell me. How about the dreadlocks – those are at least mandatory, right? And the handlebar mustache, nicely waxed and pointing upwards?