What muscle are you flexing?

Now here's a confession. I knew very early on in my childhood that sports wasn't exactly going to be the playground where I would find my glory. You know you play football and everyone's running around and there's this one jackass standing in a corner going "Hey err maybe somebody could pass the ball this way?" And then you hope they don't cause I would duck instinctively. I chose self preservation over team goals. Think I'd set my priorities pretty early in life. The one time I managed to return a shot in badminton to the other side of the net, I did a tribal dance all around the court that would have made Tatanka from WWF proud.

Over a period of time mercifully the stage provided some succour so at least I could vicariously live those fantasies of being hailed for an epic innings through art. That hope was to be shattered of course when playing cricket with the comedians. Where even the warm generous hearted Zakir Khan went from "Poddar tu khel re. Its all about participation" To " Umm actually sun tu wicket-keeping karle" to "Bhai tu umpire ban jaa". It was like living my school disappointments once again except this time not the jocks but even my nerd brethren from comedy were rejecting me.

But I'd like to believe that progress in other walks of life has slowly painfully rubbed off a wee bit in this area as well. Was playing basketball with Akshay Shinde And while I was trying to score, Akshay told me "focus on your knees". And that kind of made me stop, "Wait a minute, knees? But Im throwing the ball with my hands. Why are the knees so important?!" And I realized when I scored that basket that it was in fact the knees that mattered a lot in determining that ball's trajectory. And I recalled the time was arm wrestling with the guys and I won and I told Akshay you remember that? You're supposed to use the strength from your shoulder like my brother-in-law taught me.. And there it was again. It's called arm wrestling but you're supposed to win with your shoulder? And maybe this explains what I'd been missing all along in my epic struggle with pretty much any sport back then barring the humble cycling and swimming

Maybe I’d been focused on the wrong muscle all along. For when I think of comedy as well, while do we have the standard template of watch, learn, breathe, write, test, repeat comedy is that the only muscle to focus on? Comedy comes from analogies, the ability to relate multiple concepts and those skills are acquired as much from writing a poem, a jingle, or even writing a gigantic post like this for people with longer attention spans (and a shorter life span left over). So maybe one needs to figure which muscle really makes something work. For if you’re as lazy as me, you’ll do whatever it takes to get a life where you no longer have to move a muscle.