West clashes with East: this time it’s a death match between ghee-nurtured cholestrol and the giant, cross-training, pump-up shoe-selling sports corporations

The gym phenomenon has hit middle-class, broad-beamed India. There may well be a bit of prurience, a titillation for the outsider to be ringside while, once again, West clashes with East: this time it’s a death match between ghee-nurtured cholestrol and the giant, cross-training, pump-up shoe-selling sports corporations.

The Indian is not an enthusiastic athlete by nature. He shudders at the thought of running for pleasure.

‘Why run,’ he asks, ‘when I am so good at sitting and meditating? Why would I be wanting to make myself sweat when I am already spending so much time talcing every day, without taking even one step?’

The arrival of the gym in India is causing confusion. The Indian middle classes are fast being Americanised, with the mid-Atlantic masala twang and the mobile telephone washing through the ranks of the rupee zillionaires on a tidal wave. But the fitness fad has been approached with something unusual in India: a certain amount of cynicism, backed with a touch of trepidation. Two millennia of believing fat is good is one behemoth of a cultural hang-up to shift. Yet, despite its misgivings, middle-class India is prepared to give it a go. They toothpaste tube their generous thighs into cycling shorts, pop their mobiles into sporty carry-pouches, so fetchingly advertised by scantily-clad models with famine figures, and they are ready to go. The land of ghee and Ganesh is taking to the running machine – slowly.

The gym is only five minutes walk away from where I stay. Left past the chai stall where the rickshaw drivers lie flaccid in the heat of the day. Left again at the public urinal where the acrid smell of piss rises up to the little goddess in the roadside shrine. Straight past the Delhi Municipal Council skip, where bald dogs with scabby hides lick traces of grease off plastic bags.

Then to run the gauntlet of crossing Janpath, a tat and tourist road. Pedestrians have no crossings, no rights and, by the law of averages, a fairly short life span. There are no traffic lights to give a moment’s grace to those who have to get to the other side. Just the dance of bumpers and bonnets, jay-walking in the clog of pollution and the yelling sea of sound that is Delhi traffic.

Bala, the beggar boy, has a patch on the traffic island just outside the grand hotel where the gym is. He whips his arm out of his sleeve, binds it across his back and taps mournfully on the tinted windows of the consumers heading for the fourth floor. Windows close in response to his pitiful expression and the sleek cars nudge away from him in the jam. He shrugs and his twisted arm pulls his neck to one side. He peers across the ripple of bonnets, a small bird on his traffic island.

The sweep up to the front of the $300-a-night hotel is rich with wafts of untreated river water. The malis are spraying the lawn and it smells like shit. The stink dies on the blast of cold air that comes from behind the smoked-glass main doors. The turbans of the doormen are the indigo of Sikh warriors, their tunics have sashes in lipstick vermilion. They must ponder this irony as they fan the smell of shit in and out of the dollar-tagged air.

Two people start to go up the steps of the hotel at the same time. The first is a plump, mobile-wielding Delhi man, fresh from the back of his BMW. The traffic-light beggars have a name for BMW drivers, Buddhu ke sath Mahanga Mahbuba, BMMs, idiots with expensive girlfriends (the letter ‘W’ does not feature much in Hindi).

I am the second person on the steps, a foreign female, neither a backpacker nor a five star tourist. I have no driver, no car, no mobile. The doorman opens the door for the man and salutes. I open another one for myself. That is fine. Tariq, the tall Pashtun doorman, has opened the door for me many times before. I have no BMW and I am not a man.

BMM and I are both going to the gym. The lift attendant looks us both up and down. BMM is called Ajai and his routine is familiar. Into the gym and onto the treadmill, where he rings his wife before he starts to get out of breath.

‘Hello, Baby.’

There is a pause.

‘No Baby, this meeting is going to run on. Say kiss from Pita (Daddy).’

Another pause.

‘Yes Baby, Thai at the Hilton later – I promise.’

Deal done, he dials again.

‘Pammi, Ajai here.’

A pause.

‘Same, same.’

The conversation is over.

Pammi will be waiting for him in the lobby when he has finished in the gym. The treadmill attendant and I know the drill. It is usually Thai at the Hilton with Mrs Ajai on Thursdays, after early evening coitus with Pammi, the professional mistress. She, too, is driven in a BMW. She is one of India’s new breed: the boardroom babes, bequeathed large companies by industrialist Dad. They are perfectly capable of taking over the reins. Now baby girl does deals and sex just the way Pitaji used to. It has taken the Ajais by surprise but they have adapted fast. The mobile has opened up a whole world of extra-marital paraphernalia. The lessons have been learnt: that condoms should be carried at all times; that chewing cardamom is more subtle in removing the scent of another woman than aftershave and mints – lessons learnt with more alacrity than the variations of how to use the stomach exerciser with the easi-roll head support. But then they have also had to learn that boardroom babes do not do fat. She gets that at home. Why would she want it ex-curricular?

Rana, the sleekest Sikh in central Delhi, bounds in just as Ajai finishes setting up his Thursday night. Rana wears a large orange turban and very small shorts. He shoots up the volume on the television. Now we have BBC World at full volume. Tim Sebastian shouts at us from a dark studio. This is not what Rana is after. He hops through to MTV. A lad in camouflage pants bounces around on a pink plastic sofa spouting Hinglish, Hindi-English pop talk.

Ajai slows his treadmill to speak.

‘I’m telling you man, let’s have Preeti on Channel V. She’s hot.’

Channel V is the Indian response to MTV; the battle for the puberty viewers rages. Rana hops again and there is Preeti, shiny and adolescent, diamond stud in nose and belly-button. I was not invited to contribute to the choice of channel.

Both the men are now on the treadmills, running loudly. Ajai is not as fit Rana but he is sure as hell going to be giving his best to be keeping up. There is a woman in the gym, the testosterone flows.

Ajai has his mobile on a stool beside the treadmill. It rings constantly. Each time he beckons the attendant to hand the call to him. His mobile is less than a foot from his hand. That is not the point.

A fourth party enters. She is middle-aged and middling plump. She has beautiful even skin and her hair is short and undyed, flecked pretty silver. She has bucked the trend of every heavy-tressed, hennaed housewives. Here is an older woman with attitude but terrible gym shoes, the same kind of 1950s prep school pumps still favoured by the Indian Army for PE. Hers are a little different, they have a perky kitten stitched onto each toe. She smiles at me, ignores the men and winces at the volume from pierced Preeti and Channel V. She sets off on the exercise bicycle at a Sunday afternoon pace.

When she has finished her ten gentle minutes of cycling, she leaves. Rana hurries out with his mobile to have a more private conversation. Ajai is at my inverted shoulder. He appears to be interested in what I am reading as I hang. It is the book reviews from the imported English broadsheets; not Ajai’s usual fare.

‘You have reduced yes?’

He offers. I do not understand.

‘I am thinking that you have lost some kilos.’

Vainglorious, idiot woman, I beam back at him. I should not be able to blush, I am puce already – but I still manage.

‘Do you have a cell?’

A cell, do I have a cell? A cellular telephone, mobile phone here, cell in India.

‘No I am afraid I don’t.’

He looks at me in amazement.

‘No cell?’ ‘No cell.’

That established the ground is barren. He tries for another angle but I have gone, red-faced and tripping over the edge of the step machine as I retreat, escaping to the white towels and curious-smelling talc in the changing rooms.

The great glass window beyond the fluffy towels is tinted dark brown to soften the hardness outside. The car park below is full of imported cars sheltering in the shade of vast satellite dishes. Two malis squat in the same shade sucking on biris, hollow-cheeked, dusty and narrow beside the rounded, glossy cars. Another thin man urinates against the wall outside, pissing up against the rich. The service road beyond the wall that he pisses against is full of humanity on foot, bumping into each other in the heat, their noise and sweat censored by the darkened glass.

In the changing rooms it is silent among the towels except for the gush of a tap that someone has forgotten to turn off. Two attendants sit by the window staring out. They ignore the running tap. When they realise that I am going to use the changing room they move from the window to the bench beside the shower. They watch as I undress, following every move as if it were television. When I emerge from the steam of the shower they seem not to have moved though my gym shoes have been liberally dusted with pale mauve Daisy powder. A cloud of the talc still hangs over them. It smells cheap. The tap continues to gush. I turn it off. The girls ignore this as they continue to watch the show.

I use the comb from beside the Daisy talc and then go behind the pink plastic curtain to dress. When I come out one of the girls is picking my hairs out of the comb, one by one. The other stands by a large book, a pen in her hand.

‘Sign,’ she orders.

‘What for?’ I ask.

‘Use of locker.’

I sigh and huff. I can hear them giggling as I leave.

The bar at the bottom of the tubular glass lift is picking up for the evening. A waiter in a silver shell suit moves among the pallid European businessmen, the fabric of his slippery wear making the sound of static on static. He is part of the hotel’s space age millennium theme. No one seems to notice this vision of a Blue Peter tinfoil astronaut in their midst.

There is a blueness about the businessmen that the silver man serves, their natural colour sucked away by too many vacuum-sealed five star environments. They have little contact with life outside as they are fired around the world by the power players from headquarters in Geneva, New York or rambling estates in Gloucestershire. These pawns are too well-travelled to notice the silvery man in his dazzling suit.

Pammi waits for Ajai among the businessmen. She is at a corner table, one of only two women in the bar. The other one is a large blonde laughing loudly, her body tilted right into the face of her Sikh companion. His creamy turban echoes the swell of her breasts pouring out of something too small and black, two birds longing to fly from their nest. The Sikh is entranced. She looks like one of the Moscow blondes who spill themselves through Delhi male society with such generosity, telling tall tales of White Russian lineage. No one questions them. There is not much in the way of comparison. You don’t get many erstwhile Russian aristocrats around here.

Pammi is in western dress, a Parisian power suit. Her hair is her cultural badge, a thick dark mane falling over one shoulder. Its length contradicts the shortness of her skirt. She does not look comfortable in her skirt. She plucks at the hem. One of the hotel receptionists crosses the bar wearing jade green chiffon, her midriff exposed. She carries her bare flesh confidently.

Pammi seems not to have ordered a drink. Even for a BMW-driving woman, ordering a drink alone in a bar is a step too far.

The Sikh gets up to go to the bar. As he leaves the blonde she throws two handfuls of peanuts into her mouth before checking her lipstick in the smoked glass mirror behind the banquette where she perches. The Sikh watches Pammi from the bar. She notices but ignores him. Ajai cannot be too much longer. She looks vulnerable here, despite her battle dress and vermilion nails. This is not what Mataji (Mother) had in mind for her little girl. Maybe Pammi goes home to Ludhiana for high days and holidays. She looks like a Punjabi girl. She has the punch to her, Punjabiat they call it, the preserve of the lovelies of the North Indian state. Mataji must have wanted her to marry a nice Punjabi Sikh so that she could watch her grandsons’ hair grow long and fine. Maybe Pammi did marry a good Punjabi boy but she does not have the look of a mother about her. She is still young, probably no more than twenty-eight, plenty of time to have children

I have been standing beside the lift for too long. The silver suit has glimmered past about ten times. Ajai will come down soon and the evening will begin as he buys Pammi a vodka and Limca, something for her to wrap her restive hands around. The gym attendants will be able to switch back to satellite sport for the cricket. Outside, Bala is still on his begging shift on the traffic island. He has stopped jumping out among the cars. Perhaps he has made enough to forestall a beating from his father. His hand is no longer twisted behind his back. He stands straight, tall for his age, a good-looking boy. Maybe he dreams of being a Mumbai movie star.

The dusk pours onto the puffed tops of the speeding rickshaws buzzing by. As the light fails the city becomes a beauty again, her wrinkles and scars rinsed away by the dying day.