Kurla (E)

Asish Sawarkar. A Mumbai Body-Building Celebrity.

You could call Asish a celebrity in the little universe of body builders in Mumbai. He has won many titles and if I heard right, he was one of the runners-up at the Mr Universe contest when it was held in Mumbai last year.

However, I would not have noticed the event when it was held here because there is only one sportsman in this city for most of us - Sachin! Sachin! The rest are all humans.

Asosh is a full time body builder and will be showing off his body at Mumbai Shree. When he steps into the gym, I could feel a sudden hush and whispers, not unlike when a star cricketer walks into a dressing room of a school team. He will be there with the other top international bodybuilders from our city to motivate the youngsters and show them that this sport can provide them with a great future. He's proof that hard work pays.

Prabha Devi + Kurla East

Mumbai Shree 2012 Part 3: Mumbai Shreematis.

A good or maybe even large proportion of the people who train in the gyms where Mumbai Shree 2012 aspirants train are housewives from the area. All that laundry in the background do not help you to lose weight! Some of the gyms even have their specific time for them.

For bodybuilders, building and maintaining body is a full time job and becoming trainers is a good job option. However, they train other bodybuilders and Bollywood stars and not the women. But they do share the same space, the body builders and the women. One of the gyms in Kurla East where I went was filled with bodybuilders during the day and women in the evening.



In Prabha Devi, the gym was a place to catch up with the very "healthy" man Indian women are in love with - Ram Kapoor. I was there on the day he finally got into bed with his wife.

"You natkhat running machine"

Kurla East Gym.

In Kurla East, a rougher neighbourhood than Prabha Devi, soaps were not allowed in the gyms and the trainer, an older man, was a task master. And the women, hardworking. So no Ram Kapoor's smile and nakhras for them, they watch the bodies of old Mr Universes.




Details of the event, here in Time Out, Mumbai

Nehru Nagar, Kurla (E)

Mumbai Shree 2012. See Full Series