India Is Getting Fat. This Gym Chain Wants to Get Huge
Rush hour at a Mumbai Talwalkars.
Photograph: Mahesh Shantaram for Bloomberg Businessweek
One Friday morning in Mumbai, Madhukar Talwalkar, the 84-year-old director of the largest gym chain in India, enters the 206th and newest branch of his empire and pauses in front of a metal idol. Every Talwalkars fitness center contains a depiction of Hanuman, a monkey-shaped deity who, according to legend, once lifted a mountain. “He is a highly respected god,” Talwalkar says, admiring the figurine. “The god of strength.” Traditional depictions of Hanuman are stout and brawny, but this one is nearly steroidal, with a bulging V-shaped torso and two melonlike biceps. Talwalkar’s sculptor put Hanuman’s head on the body of a winner of the Mr. Maharashtra bodybuilding competition.
In the gym’s workout space, a dozen middle-aged Indians labor with trainers, as junior staff mop sweat from the floor. Three coaches wait impatiently for a group of panting women in saris to resume their situps, and a heavyset man in a polo shirt walks calmly on a late-model treadmill, which lets him escape Mumbai’s smoggy chaos for a simulated path through crisp Munich.