We heart the park

We have mentioned a few times how excited we are that our new apartment is about a block away from Cubbon Park.  That excitement was escalated a bit Monday morning. 

Our routine for the past few weekends has included a morning walk in Cubbon Park.  This is a great time to be out, since the park is closed to traffic on Saturday and Sunday from (at least) 6:30 to 8:00am.  On Monday we learned that the park is closed to traffic every morning!!  This is amazing for at least two reasons:  first, without traffic, in the very center of the park it is almost possible to spend a few moments away from the constant blare of horns and sputtering tuk-tuk engines and the whining buzz of motorcycles – at the very center of the park it is almost quiet; second, with the roads open to pedestrians, it is possible to walk and look up at the same time, which really is quite a feat (the difficulty of walking on the sidewalks in Bangalore will get its own photo blog post soon), and something that makes going out for a run or walk possible.  We have now found a place to run in the mornings!!  

The morning park scene itself is really quite amazing, too.  Given the levels of population and congestion that we are getting used to, it is impossible to call the morning park crowded.  But there are a lot of people out getting some exercise to start their day.  The crowd seems to be mostly middle to upper-middle class Bangaloreans, from young professionals and young families to middle managers to retirees.  The most striking demographic feature (for us) is the lack of married (or dating) couples out together and the lack of mixed groups of folks.  You will see a lot of singles, a lot of groups of men or groups of women, even some adult children with a parent, but very rarely will you see couples together, or mixed-gender groups.  Even families are usually only out with one parent.  OK, to be fair, I guess we need to admit that since hetero marriage is not only normative but legally enforced we maybe just don’t recognize all the kinds of couples that might exist here.  But still, it is rare to see many couples.  The two main exceptions to this are the other Europeans and ex-pats out exercising, and the group organized exercisers.        

And all of these people are exercising in all kinds of ways, doing anything and everything you can imagine.  There are, of course, a lot of runners and walkers.  Every-once-in-while you will get buzzed by a small peloton.  There are always a few people working through their morning salutations and yoga routines.  You will also see a lot of pick-up badminton matches and a couple pick-up cricket games.  But the most intriguing park users are the organized groups, because they are mostly doing calisthenics, and by calisthenics I mean old-school calisthenics.  That these folks are intriguing to us is, I assume, a mark of our being “over-caffeinated Americans.”   But toe-touches and arm circles just seem so junior-high Presidents Physical Fitness test. I half-expect pre-Governator Arnold to make an appearance with some rousing words of encouragement!  And so it is really quite fun to watch a group of middle-aged folks rhythmically touching their toes, move through a series of jumping-jacks, then get led through a set of windmills.  What makes this really fun watching is that the idea that exercise specific clothing is necessary to exercise hasn’t really caught on here, and even when it has, the dress is in general so conservative that it’s hard to recognize the clothing as fitness clothing.  So you will see as these groups of folks doing their twists and bends a few women in saris, and sometimes a few women fulfilling hijab wearing some form of jilbāb, some men in slacks and shirts, and a few folks wearing sweat pants and long shirts, even though it is already quite warm at 7 in the morning, and maybe only one or two people wearing anything close to American fitness gear.  Even the instructors are wearing kits that can only loosely be designated as fitness wear.  Although there is clearly a lot of organization, planning, and forethought that goes into these groups, it really looks like people were just randomly out in the world and decided to do some synchronized shoulder shrugs.  Which is a really long way of saying that the $200+ uniform of Nike Dri-fit, two-way breathable, stretch running shorts and shirt with arch support stitched socks and the newest model Asics shoes seems a bit excessive and out-of-place.  Which may or may not be more out place than Andi and I running together.