A Royal Pain
When the body begins to groan, squeal, screech, grate, grind and demand answers.
In 2024, I started looking at people around me in a very different light.
I was obsessed with how they did it. The little things, I mean — walking, running, playing a sport, kalaripayattu-ing, dancing, cycling, picking up things from the floor, skipping, jumping, climbing up the stairs, climbing down the stairs, so on and so forth.
And as my frozen shoulder became more frozen and spread from one shoulder to the other, I was consumed by videos of people moving their arms in different angles.
In fact my last years’s You Tube search history will probably throw up Tamannah Bhatia’s Aaj Ki Raat as one of the most watched videos. The way her white arms appear, disappear, rise, fall and flail around effortlessly in more directions than one can humanly imagine was a delight for sore arms!
The frozen shoulder was just a little blip, I have had chronic issues with the ‘little things’. The knees, for instance, have always been a little dodgy. You might say “hmm your weight” (and rightly so) before I finish sulking about the knees, but let me tell you I wasn’t always this weighty (I was 47 at 21!) and the knees were a bit suspect back then too.
I am not sure if it was really dodgy or I had imagined it all. As a child I remember my mum once telling me that during my first check up after I was born, the head nurse in the Maternity ward and an acquaintance, Sister Philomena (Aunty) told mum that everything is fine with the baby. “Only she is a bit knock kneed”. And my mum’s first reaction to that was “so she can’t wear skirts when she grows up”. Not “will she walk normal?”or “will it be a problem when she grows older?”. Nope. Skirt !!!
Aunty added “she might not be able to run a lot”. Somehow, this part of the story stuck in my head. And voila, I believed that my knees are not meant for the stadium.
But it is not that I didn’t play. On the contrary, I played a lot-in the gully, in school, after school basketball; I cycled a lot, I jumped from garages and parapets to retrieve shuttlecocks, I climbed little hillocks, I ran down those very hillocks, I jumped stairs (from landing to landing)… Oh, I did a lot. I just didn’t run in the stadium.
I have had leg pains since I was in eighth. I (and my parents) woke up to crazy calf cramps. The protocol was simple — one of them would come, give me water, press my knees and claves, tie it up with a naara1 and pat me to sleep. Somedays a little Relaxyl (the Volini and Moov of those days) would be applied. I used to sleep with the ointment, and naara next to me. I still do, only now the naara is replaced with the crepe bandage and my parents with the husband.
But it is the last few years, that the knees have really started to call out for help. And I strongly suspect that the person sitting next to me can probably hear the knees creak, groan, grind, grate and click as though a million pieces of a mechanical jigsaw puzzle are suddenly falling into place so that I can stand.
Despite this I went for Kalari for a month in February last year. And when I realised I can do nothing there without bending my knees at 90 degrees or 45 degrees, I dropped out.
So anyways, that explains my obsession with others.
How do they do it? Do their knees hurt? Do they feel that their knee cap will disintegrate into a zillion pieces if they climbed those three steps? Do they not look for elevators? Don’t they feel they will topple over if they bent their upper bodies any more than thirty degrees? Do they also do a full dress rehearsal (in their heads) of picking up things from the ground before the actual performance (because I do)? How are they able to sit on the ground cross-legged? And then get up?
These are very genuine issues. I was at a friend’s dad’s memorial service. The chairs on the sides were taken by senior citizens. I was too ashamed and self respecting to occupy a chair. I gladly stood in one corner until another friend insisted I sit next to her. ON THE FLOOR. I had to oblige.
But when it was time to get up, I made a mistake - I went on my knees. And then I was stuck. The brain and the knees were on a different plane. I didn’t quite know how to stand up. I did a Robert Downey Jr in my head — ‘It mustn’t register on an emotional level’ and all that. But just like in my head I am Madhuri Dixit (most of the time), at that moment I was RDJ.
But the head is different from the brain.
I was kneeling and I was stuck. My calf and ankles were short circuiting, and it was very rapidly going cold and numb. I quietly held the friend’s hand who was standing next to me and sought help. I am hoping no one noticed me standing up with the help of two very willowy people. The only thing on my mind was that I don’t pull them down with me!
After every such episode, I want to head to the gym the very next day. Do lunges and squats and jumps and whatnots. The ‘very next day’ never really comes! As in, they have, I have gone to three gyms in the last 19 years — 7 days, 3 days, 1 day.
When the pain is too much my body and I usually have a little chat and on those day I am Sameer from Dil Chahta hai.
Body: The back cramps, the wrists twist, the shoulders feel stiff. I want to swing my arms 360 degree but it is jammed, rusted, on the verge of getting dislodged at the flick of a finger. The joints are somewhere. The knots have been tied somewhere else. It is all wrong. What do you propose to do?
Me: Haan…
Body: “Do you have a plan? The other day I heard someone use the terms ‘overuse’ and ‘underuse’. Really, overuse? You know you messed me up trying to open a bloody fucking refrigerator. You felt the spasm-tug on the rotator cuff of your right arm the first time round. But you did it again…
Me: Two negatives make a positive. Alle2?
Body: Wow! Well, now you are stuck with me. Do you have a plan? Only if I was one of those plastic dolls, it would have been so much easier. I could be beaten and hammered out to be set right. Good as new. The arm could be fixed right into the cavities and swung at 360 degrees.
Me: But…
Body: Didn't you plan swimming lessons for the month of May? And here you are stuck with a frozen shoulder. Bravo! Oh then there are the knees too. How old are we?
Me: 45. Will be…
Body: I have often caught you watch people bend their knees, jump, run, squat without a flicker of pain. I also know that you left Kalari because of dodgy knees. It was ALL about the knees!
Me: I know. Pakshe3…
Body: Your knees have been dodgy since you were a kid, so you refuse to believe it was the weight. Ever. So you won’t do anything about it.
Me: I am taking uric acid meds.
Body: Good! you are on meds. How about some exercises? Why do you never think about that? You know it works, right.
Me: Athe4. Athe.
Body: I remember once you had to give your urine sample. You were in fourth.
Me: Athe. I remember. Dad gave me a vial and waited for me outside the loo. The hospital loo had an undertone of mild pee in that overpowering stench of sanitary hygiene—chlorine, bleach, ammonia, dettol… God knows what all. I couldn’t really pee. I tried.
Body: Yeah. You promptly mixed water in the two drops of urine you managed to squeeze out of your tiny bladders… without retching. Only if that day, you had shown a little more sincerity, they would have figured if you had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis or not.
Me: Enikkariyaam5. I know.
Body: I am getting tired. And we are going to be 46 now. Do you have a plan?
Plan. Same old, same old. Hit the gym.
This time a little more determined because I read somewhere (and the jist is) that I want to be fit not to look hot but be able to lift things from the floor when I am old(er).
Let’s see how long Gym 4.0 lasts. But all this pain cloud has a sliver lining. Thanks to sports bra and exorcist physios, my shoulders are now unfrozen and free.
A part of this essay was written during one of our
circle meetings. gave this beautiful prompt of “writing from/through/by/for the body”.drawstrings.
Isn’t it?
But.
yes.
I know.
Chronic pain is frustrating and annoying, and turning it into humourous essay is no mean feat. I hope you have better luck with Gym Chalo Season 4. 🙌🏽
Such a joy to read you, Savvy... even though you write of annoying pain!
And of course so much resonance - because who doesnt't live with nagging pain in the body.