please leave me alone

We joined a gym. Our gym is called Fitness One.

The notion of a gym is rather new here and they have begun to spring up in answer to demand fueled largely by ex-pats, non-resident Indians (NRIs) who have become accustomed to Western gyms, and young folks who have adopted Western images of beauty. They are very popular and actually rather expensive, by Chennai standards.

We used to go to the little gym behind the Consulate, which was just a little trailer with some old and frequently non-functioning equipment in it. It really served our purposes quite well. However, when I was in the US, they closed the gym in order to make some improvements. The improvements are very nice. But the result of this renovation was that they gym was closed for months and so we broke down and joined Fitness One.

I can't stand it.

It is a lovely gym and the equipment is great. They have all sorts of classes and modern machines and cool stuff like TVs at every treadmill. And AC. They have AC.

But . . .

They play the most awful music you can imagine. I could live with that. I was used to the gym in DC, which had music that was equally horrible, and I survived that. Despite the fact that I often found myself humming tunes by Brittany Spears that I couldn't even identify.

What really gets on my nerves is the CONSTANT touchy-feely interaction with the staff. In true South Indian style, they have hired approximately 1.5 trainers per customer, and one is greeted upon entering by a phalanx of employees standing there to welcome you. They consistently walk up and ask you questions about how your day has been while you are counting reps of your curls. Just when you're really hitting your stride on the treadmill and breaking a serious sweat, someone will inevitably walk over to you to give you some idiotic advice regarding your pace. They constantly tell Chris that he is using the rowing machine wrong, when they are actually teaching people to use it incorrectly and he is the only person in the place using it properly. Boy, does he get mad.

The best incident to date occurred a few weeks ago when a slight little thing of a trainer walked up to me when I was right in the middle of squats and started to shill. She asked me, point blank, for the names and telephone numbers of all of my friends and co-workers. I sort of lost it a little bit, because the gall of the thing sort of shocked me.

I realize that these are just cultural differences, but the extreme attention and meddling has made us start to hate the gym. We have to steel ourselves to enter the door. Every once in a while, we go back to the little gym behind the Consulate. Just for some peace and quiet.