Luck vs six-pack abs

A few months back, during my visit to Mumbai (Bombay, India), a routine chat with someone I dearly respect, turned an interesting bend – in reality, merit has limited merit. And ultimately you got to be lucky in life.

You got to be lucky in life – work life, love life, sex life, marriage, post-marriage, shoelaces; you got to be kidding me, if you said no.

Sitting across him and while he was talking to me, my mind suddenly leaped out and formed its own hyper-fiber-optic connection to what someone in my family said a few years back – “You’re doing well, you lucky you.”

“No, it’s quite a bit of work actually…”

“Arey baba … to be able to do that work you have to be lucky. Look at me, I thought I’ll be a cameraman, but I had to be an engineer. Luck!”

What a way to disguise your failure, I thought. Back then I was rather judgmental.

I put a dot on that conversation. I dragged a line back to the room in Mumbai and put another dot on it. The third dot happened somewhere mid air, so it pretty much landed itself on this article.

I am at a pretty conflicting state of mind, have been for some while now. My self-confidence is as fickle as my self-doubt. I’m not a failure; I’m not successful in my own eyes. Tricky. Can I therefore, just take it easy and put my misery behind luck?

Wouldn’t it be easy to just throw up my hands and say, “You know what, maybe I got lucky in a few things and for the things I don’t, well, I wasn’t lucky enough.”

But isn’t it true that anything is possible if you really try hard? Don’t we all just try very, very hard to the best of our perseverance and at some point, give up? In life, there are many variables, but if you keep yourself as the constant, isn’t ten-twenty-thirty years enough to go past all of that and realize your dream?

Do we first give up and then consider ourselves unlucky? Or do we consider ourselves unlucky and then give up?

Doesn’t matter. I don’t want to think about the egg and the chicken. It’s my life and I come first. So, six-pack abs.

For an ordinary guy like me six-pack abs is an out of body experience. Out of my body. The part of India I come from, even mannequins don’t have six pack abs. A beer belly is the ultimate sign of ‘prosperity’. Back at home, for sports, we play a board game called “Carromboard”. And the exercise we get out of standing in one spot and delicately knocking coins with our fingers, we pretty much make up for it by having six cups of tea (two spoons of sugar each time) and non-stop munching of deep fried heaven. There’s always a race between our waistline and our age. Till the time we are diagnosed “diabetic with high-cholesterol problem”, the waistline wins.

With that background, let me also confess, I haven’t been staying home for many years now. So I pretty much escaped the tradition. I am a runner, I’ve been working on my fitness for some years now and I’m not a stranger to workouts.

But I’m 34 and I never had washboard abs. I love my food (at one point this investor friend of mine wanted to invest in KFC because he believed that I’ll make the stock prices rise), I drink when I drink. And we are talking about six-pack abs.

Six pack abs: We all have fat; we have to have fat. In Usain Bolt it’s 4%. In me and you it’s 15 to 85. For most of us, office-going people, we eat through the day which kind of gets stored because our bodies don’t burn enough. (How much calories can you burn by typing facebook updates.) So day after day, month after month, year on year, this fat accumulates and sends itself to different parts of the body. The lower abdomen, which holds the smaller intestine, is the first one to get graced. And then it spreads. For some fat people, that fat spreads and spreads and reaches the arteries around the heart. And then one day … they start morning walks. So your abdomen, which is the first one to sport the jolly fat, is also the last one to let go of it. When you have absolutely minimal fat in your arms, legs, face, hips, thighs etc, will the abs get a knock on its door. Six pack abs mean you have absolutely minimal Total Body Fat whatsoever. You’re almost Usain Bolt, minus the endorsement money.

What does it take to get six pack abs: Simple process – you have to work your food out and a bit more from the reserve. So what you eat in a day, pretty much decides how much do you have to sweat. If you control your food then you can work yourself into a gradual exercise routine and rhythm. If you can’t, sorry. Yes, it also depends on your metabolism. But if you do have fantastic genetic metabolism then why are you still reading this, dude?

Why is it impossible for a regular office-going person to get washboard abs: For ten to twelve hours a day you are working your fingers and earlobes. And that, we all know, works well for our appetite. The coffee is free, the lunch isn’t prepared by your dietician, and most days deserve a beer ending. Plus when you travel, chances of hitting the gym are as remarkable as joining the mile high club with Scarlett J. You do all that you can, you try so hard, you think you’re getting there and then boom! You’re waylaid. Upon return you get back with a vengeance, you work out-out-out, you watch what you’re eating. You sip orange juice at night clubs till again, you’re waylaid. Once again, you get back with a vengeance, you … get waylaid. You repeat this cycle for as long as you can, but you soon you realize that you’re caught between the disturbingly committed effort and the magazine cover result. You give in. It’s impossible for a regular office-going person to get washboard abs.

And that’s the point – it’s impossible, but washboard abs are one of nature’s true marvels that is NOT dependant on luck.

If you know the current state of your body and you do whatever it takes, you WILL get washboard abs. It might take you a year, or two, but both the variables - how much you burn and how much you eat, is totally, completely, unmistakably, dependant on you. You decide all of it. And the only thing that will win it for you, is your mind, your own mind and not some cosmic intervention that made Britney Spears a star. Or George W Bush the president!

It is a straight line. And though there are many things that are thrown at you while you walk the line, it ends at a specific point. If you can tell yourself that no matter what, I WILL GET WASHBOARD ABS and cement it in your head, nothing can stop it from not happening.

That to me is the most important reason why I want washboard abs. I know it’s impossible. I know nothing’s impossible. And I’m really tired of waiting to get lucky. I need the answers. I need to know whether it is really luck or is it my own lack of application.

I want washboard abs and I am going to work on it for as long as it takes to work on it. Through work, travel and maybe even injuries. But on this one, I won’t give up till the fat belly sings its own requiem.

I want to, I need to, I have to say - “Luck! Kiss my wash-fucking-board abs!”