I go to the gym. I also play a few racket sports. And I have realised something important. Sports are better because the gym makes me feel like I am back in 1st standard.
It is the counting I hate.
Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.
In the gym, the win is reaching a number. In sports, the win is earning a point by playing well or confidently lying about the line. There is drama. There is tension. There is character development. Research also says racket sports improve hand eye coordination and brain. I did not read the research. I just liked the conclusion.
I basically play sports to avoid revisiting 1st standard.
If you are thinking of starting, here is my guide.
Table Tennis
This is the sport I miss the most since quitting corporate. Most offices have a table tennis table and that non living piece of wood has done more for employee morale than the entire HR department.
Table tennis brings people together, creates bonding, reduces stress, and never asks you to circle back on this over mail.
It is also a low effort sport. No shoes. No costume change. You can play in formals. I have lost games of table tennis to people who were on client calls.
Badminton
In Hyderabad, badminton is the second biggest real estate business after actual real estate. Every two kilometres, you will find a Jockey store and next to it a badminton court.
This sport is easy to learn. The only requirement is that you have a job because you need to afford racket shoes and hourly court rent.
In the gym there is a punching bag but you never know how to channel your frustration towards your boss. In badminton it is simple. Every time you think of your boss, jump and hit a smash. This is the real reason IT employees play badminton after work.
Tennis
Tennis is tough in all ways. Difficult to learn. Requires stamina, training, and discipline. Watching the Australian open itself was so tiring I wonder how hard playing the sport must be. Courts are rare. Players are rarer. Even Sania Mirza has moved to pickleball. If you are playing tennis as a hobby, please invite me. I would like to see how this sport is actually played in real.
Pickleball
I should not be speaking about pickleball because I have never played it. But I have seen people play from a distance. This sport looks easier than table tennis. I have seen women play in heels and men play while holding shawarma in the other hand. Very doable. Pickleball is a geriatric sport. Arthritis has beaten this sport 3-0. You will mostly find it at drive ins and food courts. Earlier these places had ludo and chess boards. Now they have pickleball. True story.
Squash
This is the best sport in the world.
It burns around 650 calories an hour. Last week my heart rate touched 165.
Squash gives you the intensity of tennis without demanding that you be fit before starting. It has the highest joy to money ratio of any sport.
I play every week with my friend Maddy. He is a pro. I am poor. We should not be co existing on the same court. Yet we play every Sunday. It is like a bilateral series between Australia and Namibia.
I never win. He never loses. Still it never gets boring because only ten people in the city play this sport and on Sunday mornings two of them are us.
This is also the sport that helped me go from 130 kilos to 87. I go there to lose the match and lose some kilos. It has been six months since I have won a single game but being bad at a difficult sport somehow feels like a win.
That is what sports do to you. They turn you into a positive loser.
At the gym, I would have learnt to count till 1000.
Sandesh
@msgfromsandesh
(This comedian is here to tell funny stories about Hyderabad)
(The writer’s views are his own)