On a pleasant, not-so-sunny morning at Gandhi statue on Marina Beach, Chennai, Vishwa Dayakaran, 26, and Vignesh Raghavan, 23, are doing a human scale, a strength move in which as Vishwa balances his entire body on his palms, Vignesh has his arms wrapped around the former’s waist and balances his weight off the ground.
“This is not a parkour move but good for strengthening,” says Vishwa, one of the founders of Chennai Parkour. The duo is accompanied by Daniel M, 21, and Raja D, 28. They are soon seen doing what Vishwa describes as a ‘monkey vault’, ‘dive roll’ and ‘lazy vault’. “There are others like cat climb, travelling vault, street vault, speed vault and precision vault, it’s not fixed, one can always think of improvising these moves,” he says, of Parkour, a training discipline that involves overcoming an obstacle while traversing from point A to point B. It originated from military obstacle training, and in its modern form is believed to be founded by the French actor, choreographer and traceur David Belle.
Practitioners of Parkour are called traceurs and Chennai is no stranger to them. Like any youngster, these men were also fascinated by the quick jumping, scaling, balancing, running and hanging that Parkour involves. Hollywood movies increasingly show six-footers climb buildings in action-packed sequences, finishing in style without a scratch on their body. The group is self-taught and continue to learn by watching YouTube videos.
Prabhu Mani, 31, co-founder of Chennai Parkour is a soft-spoken, well-built man; his patience and composure evident when he speaks. He says while people are quick to get attracted to the glamour quotient of the discipline, they do not realise it is much beyond showing off their moves. “Parkour is an art of movement and its richness is underappreciated. You ace problem-solving, practising Parkour, as a traceur always thinks of overcoming things — even laziness. He’s quick on his feet and in his mind. You’re disciplined, responsible and start looking at everything in life from a different prism,” he says.
Chennai Parkour has over 100 students of different age groups, men, women and kids alike.
Learning parkour has changed the lives of this quartet in more ways than they could imagine. Parkour introduced the group to movies, ads and theatre. “We started working with Nizhal, an NGO for protection of trees, helping them clean neighbourhoods and to conduct plantation drives. We’re socially responsible now. We are involved in the theatrical production of Ponniyin Selvan, a historical Tamil novel. I am training the actors for a stealth sequence in the play,” says Prabhu.
Prabhu is quite wary of the young who are accustomed to a leisurely lifestyle these days as a lot of them take up Parkour but drop out soon citing excuses “While strengthening of the body is a given, Parkour helps one condition the mind to approach things steadily, hones creativity, helps identify difficulties, adapt to situations and widen perspectives,” he says.
Danny, a final-year marine engineering student says, “We are required to spend six months at sea and six months on land. When there are technical problems with the ship, like in the propulsion system, we are required to swim to it to fix it. A lot of what they teach us in training is similar to what I do in Parkour.” Vignesh talks about how he approached the group after seeing a clip in a movie and how it changed everything. “I just wanted to do that speedy precision movement right away without conditioning, without workout. But I learnt that nothing comes easy, and worked hard to learn the techniques. I had arrears in BTech at the time. Later, I realised if I can jump walls without hurting myself, I can surely clear my papers,” he says, laughing.
suraksha@newindianexpress.com