This was one Morning After I would not forget easily. Muscles I didn’t know existed were suddenly crying out for attention. You see, the previous day I had attended my first Kung Fu lesson. It had been my childhood dream to learn the martial art. Well, sort of. Back then I was more impressed by Tae Kwon Do. Though, technically, I didn’t know the difference between the two. Just that when Jean Claude Van Damme decimated the bad guys, it was Tae Kwon Do. Kung Fu was more Bruce Lee. Give me the Belgian beefcake any day. Anyway, here I was, at a South Mumbai martial arts school. It had been an exhausting day and the last thing I wanted to do was, well, kick butt. Instructor Nitin Jumle promised the class would ‘revitalise’ me. Yeah, right. Try explaining that to someone who treats exercise as if it were a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach (the size of a small mouse, for the curious). We kicked off with a never-ending warm-up session. On-the-spot running for what seemed like hours, jumping, stretches, lying on the floor and raising one leg at 90°, then raising both. That’s it, I decided. It was time for me to make use of my first-timer privileges and put my foot down. I mean, legs down. To confirm I wasn’t the only one in pain, I glanced across at the student on my right—a nine-year-old lying calmly on his back, both legs in the air, as if he was watching a movie on the ceiling. A little shamefaced, I hung on. But then came the real clincher—the ‘punches’ and ‘sequences’. Though physically less trying than the warm-up, this is the part where skill and concentration score over sheer power. To deliver a powerful punch, the right ‘stance’ is very important—legs akimbo and knees bent to get a firm grip on the ground, the instructor said. Our Bollywood heroes, though, can take on 10 guys at once without bothering about such mundane details, I thought. STYLE CHECK Crane: The palm is kept open to deflect the opponent’s energy Snake: The body moves sideways, back or forward to deflect an oncoming blow, and then launches a swift counter attack Tiger: The blow is delivered with the fist, with equal pressure and speed Then Jumle asked me to kick him in the stomach while he stood with outstretched palms facing downward. Not wanting to cause pain, I kicked gently. The first and second time, I missed. On the third attempt, my foot hit his palms—and a burning pain shot up my leg. Jumle hadn’t moved an inch. I spent the rest of the evening watching rather than joining in. There was the flying kick, which broke a brick six feet in the air; the side kick, which sent a student flying. And the literally deadly ‘crane’ and ‘tiger’ techniques—where a single blow can kill. Later that night, as my head hit the pillow, I knocked the daylights out of six burly goons in a dark, lonely alley.
