With 5,500 members, Kolkata's oldest gymnasium is fighting fit at 106

Kolkata: On reaching Hatkhola, off Shobhabazar, a drive down Hara Chandra Mullick Street leads the visitor to a narrow lane, cramped even for two persons to walk together. The whitewashed walls abound with paintings of freedom fighters, Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita and scenes from the 'Ramkrishna Kathamrita'.Where this old-world north Kolkata alley ends is the entrance to Hatkhola Byayam Samity. At 106, it is the city's oldest gymnasium. Established by freedom fighters in 1910, it is still going strong.Manohar Aich and many other legends would regularly work out there with kusti and mugur at the feet of mammoth-sized wall paintings of Lord Hanuman, the resident deity of the samity.The Mitra family of Hatkhola -who owned quite a bit of property here -donated the piece of land to freedom fighters Upendranath Bandyopadhyay and Pushpalal Chakraborty, who were associated with Anushilan Samity. Bandyopadhyay was also a co-accused with Barin Ghosh and Aurobindo Ghosh in the Alipore Bomb case.Bodybuilding and exercise were part of the regimen that the revolutionaries of this school followed. With the sympathy of the Mitras, the samity naturally teemed with freedom fighters at that time.The wooden maces that they used, the iron wall bar, donkaath for the classic donbaithak, leg press, bench press and pull-over -all exist to this day at the samity and are used by pehelwans or byambirs as the members prefer to call themselves. The samity has 5,500 members aged between 20 and 70. Hatkhola Byayam Samity has added modern workout equipment to keep up with the times, but the "stars" seriously into bodybuilding still prefer to go the traditional way . The gym has produced several bodybuilders who have won the coveted Mr India title like Shankar Saha, Kartick Saha, Kalachand Roy and recently in 2013-14, Sujan Roy . "Ours is more a temple than a gym, where we follow century-old techniques. Two hours of intensive workouts are routine for us. This helps us get a body that never sags, unlike the ones that are pumped up by nutritional and steroid supplements," said Roy .Sixty-year-old retired airlines employee Ashok Ghosh Dastidar was swinging the 10 kilo wooden mace with the ease of a child working his favourite toy . "I have been doing this for 40 years. No modern day weight or fitness training can match the age-old methods," he said.Earlier, the club would also have a mud-lime-turmeric bed for wrestlers. This lay defunct for want of users but the samity is trying to revive it.“We have not only survived but also flourished all these years just by following ancient body-building and exercise regimen using what modern gyms might call archaic equipment and yet, at just Rs 50 a month per member, we are continuously producing the best bodies. Isn't this something to boast about?“ secretary Somnath Banerjee said.(Inputs from Akshita Todi and Sagnik Mukherjee)