The Fourth Milestone - An Injured Knee

My tryst with physical fitness continued even after I completed my internal medicine residency and joined the subspecialty training program in Nephrology. At that time I preferred sport to gym and my go-to sport was badminton. I played as often as I could and was addicted to it. This addiction was so powerful that when I got married in 1999 and went on my honeymoon to Mahabaleshwar, I traipsed around the whole hill town looking for a hotel which had a badminton court!

With luggage and wife in tow, I walked from hotel to hotel asking just one question at the reception “Does this hotel have a badminton court?”. Finally, I was brought down to earth by an elderly Parsee lady at the reception desk of the 18th hotel. She amusedly looked both of us up and down, dressed in our wedding finery and said in her typical Parsee accent, “You have come on your honeymoon to this honeymooner’s paradise in order to play badminton?”. With my wife laughing in the background, I sheepishly booked a room at that hotel and gave up badminton for the rest of the honeymoon!

Post honeymoon I got back to my job and to badminton. Unfortunately, years of high intensity badminton subjected my knees to a lot of wear-and-tear injury. This prompted me to stop sport and switch to gym for physical activity and fitness. Now I am a certified gym junkie. Know the difference between a “gym goer” and a “gym junkie”? A gym goer goes to the gym to stay fit while a gym junkie stays fit so that he can go to the gym!

I do not target 5 days a week or 25 days a month or 300 days a year but I target 3000 days in 10 years!