Mel Gibson has a "delicious butt," said some famous actor in a movie. It was quite brutal of her to mention it, considering she said this to Hugh Grant, who suffers from a severe emaciated derriere syndrome. Search for "Hugh Grant side profile body" and chances are you won't see his butt in any picture. That's because he doesn't have one to begin with. But who am I to mock him, for I have suffered a buttless existence for almost 50 years of my life. Rumor has it that I had a nice and shapely one while growing up, but years of cycling and motorcycling have compressed them into flatbread from buns or buttercups, with the pressure squeezing out all the yeast.
Another reason can be that I had butt envy for Bubun'da, who had the perfect glutes, from playing all the soccer that he did. Psychologists say butt envy is a real thing, where if your neighbor has a prominent one, your brain starts forgetting about your glutes and gets everything done by your lower back and thigh muscles instead. It is called gluteal amnesia, and believe me, am not making this up.
After leaving Durgapur at 18, I thought I will meet other flatbread men, but as luck would have it, I ran into Arup Sarkar and the butt envy continued for another painful five years. His brain hadn't forgotten his glutes, and kept them well cushioned for some unfair reason unknown to me.
However, with my fiftieth birthday coming up in six months, I thought of gifting myself a beach bod, and work toward shedding some flab and gaining some muscle mass. Like all Indian men with beefed up bodies and skinny legs, I have the same problem. I worked out my upper body, and ignored the lower. And I have a theory for why Indian men have historically ignored their lower bodies.
Mirrors.
Yes, mirrors. Let me tell you why.
Remember how in the fifties we had only pale North Indian heroes in Bollywood? It didn't matter if they were extremely obese or had spindly limbs, as long as they were fair and wore lipstick. That is because in India, what was perceived as male hotness evolved with the economy. In the India of the yore, a mirror was synonymous with a small shaving mirror. You could only see your face, and as long as you had access to lipstick and face powder, you were covered.
As the economy progressed, and the cost of sticking mercury behind glass came down, Indians could afford half mirrors, and we started seeing heroes like Sunny Deol and Anil Kapoor, hirsute as fuck, who dared to come out shirtless. By now Indian men could see half of their bodies and were vigorously working on their pectorals. Had it not been for all that chest hair, some of them could have been mistaken for generously endowed Bavarian women.
Suddenly, probably around the time when Dr Manmohan Singh was the Finance Minister and opened up the economy, full-length mirrors became a thing. We could finally see how we looked under those baggy pants. And believe me, it wasn't a pleasant sight at all. We had biceps and no triceps, because heroes in films are shown to work only on their biceps with dumbbells. And we had no thighs, butts, or calves at all. All that cycling, mind you, had had NO effect at all.
By then my butt envy had turned toward women, and I had no time to work on mine any more. If you don't have one, go after one, was the general idea.
However, three decades later as I now want to work out my glutes and bring them back to shape, I have nobody to turn to but Arindam Mukherjee, who's not only an expert on geopolitics, but also an avid body builder. "But I'm right wing," he said, "what if I mislead you? Why don't you ask some of the comrades instead?" This butt politics was getting murky and I couldn't possibly have asked Kim Jong Un for tips on working out my lower half, could I?
The only option left was to remind my brain to have a conversation with my butt. So I started with "Hey you up there, careful with the 100 dollar bill am holding between my butt cheeks."
And the brain replied, "Eff off you miserable Indian, that's more than your entire life's savings. Have you even seen a one-dollar bill?"
There went my plan!
Now all you can do is accept me as I am when I turn 50.
