All intact!

Have you ever broken a bone?

I’m a gymnast. And I’ve never been injured. But to be honest, I was also super flexible, so I always had one foot planted on the ground most of the time. Coach always insisted that my flexibility ensured that I never put too much pressure or stress on my bones, which is probably why I never got hurt too badly in practice. Eventually, I moved into Rhythmic Gymnastics, where the props went flying and I remained glued to the ground. Well almost!

But before I moved to Rhythmic gymnastics, I was an artistic gymnast, and I spent a lot of time learning to perform the vault, the beam, the floor exercises, and the asymmetric bars. While the floor and beam were my preferred events the bars used to be broken before it was my turn, so I hardly got to practice it and the vault was the event I disliked the most. I loved taking off from the springboard but hated that feeling of free flying. On the beam and during the floor exercises, my flexibility ensured that I had either a foot or a hand close to the ground. On the vault, I was off the ground and in the air and not having control over where or how I landed made me very uncomfortable. Self-sabotage was my recourse in this event. I would take off from the springboard but refused to use it as leverage. This always resulted in me landing heavy and this further hindered my learning. The only time I ever wished for an injury was on Tuesdays and Thursdays- the days vaulting was scheduled for the girl’s team in my gym.

Broken bones are something I hoped for when we had to practice vaulting. It was one of my least favorite events to practice in gymnastics. I could run and leap off the springboard, but the one thing that terrified me the most was the landing. The springboard let you fly and gravity brought you down- in between these two events, you either turned somersaults, performed log rolls or did the many things you could do to score maximum points in the competition. According to me you either felt nimble and graceful when you took the leap of the springboard or you felt clunky and leaden and I always felt the latter. Maybe it was just me, because all I saw when I took off, was the top of the building next door. The vault was set up too close to the compound wall for me to think of vast spaces so I could just take off and land where I would. The fear was very real! And to make matters worse, I had a teammate, who took off the springboard, did her twists, and landed badly on her ankle, fracturing it. There was my wish, being handed to someone else. I just stopped wishing.

I used to crack my joints and probably can still manage to crack a few of them today. Back in the day, we learned to crack almost all the joints in the body, starting from the neck to the shoulders, and then the spine, the hands, elbows, and wrists, and then the hips, knees, and ankles. Then came the stories that cracking your joints would accelerate arthritis and so we stopped. But after doing it for so long, to suddenly try to stop doing it, makes it difficult. We struggled through the process but stopped cracking our joints. Broken bones in gymnastics is a common occurrence and I managed almost 7 years in this sport, without so much as a sprain. I am probably one of the lucky few to have gotten away so easily. Today, almost 15 years after I stopped being a gymnast, I am left with creaking bones and weak back muscles that require constant exercise to keep healthy. But, broken bones I have none.

At one point, after I stopped gymnastics, I visited my sibling’s house during my vacations. That was the first time I saw chicken prepared at home. On that visit, my sibling made the chicken curry, and the combination at lunch that day was lentils, rice, and chicken curry. Dad had introduced us to non-vegetarian food from a young age, but we had always only tried out the boneless starters at the restaurants we had visited. This was one of the first times I tried chicken with bones, and the experience was interesting.

Lunch on the weekends when all of us were at home was always a family affair especially if my sibling had made the effort to cook. We used to sit around the center table pretending that it was a dining table and would eat together. Usually, we served ourselves and mealtimes were no-fuss times when everyone ate what was served. That day, I picked up the ladle to serve myself the chicken, when my BIL selected one of his preferred pieces of meat and served me. This was a gesture of generosity that I accepted wholeheartedly because I had no idea about the kinds of pieces there would be in the dish. He had served me one of the fleshiest pieces of chicken, the wishbone. I loved eating my lunch that day because, unlike restaurant dishes that are limited in quantity, I could eat to my heart’s content and there would still be leftovers for the evening. When I was almost done, he picked the wishbone off my plate and taught me to break it at the joint. There was some story of the person getting the bigger piece of the joint being lucky. It was a game, and we tugged at that bone with everything we had. The tiny bone was coated with spices and oil, our hands wet and oily, and our fingers kept slipping off the wishbone, but we did not give up and kept tugging until it snapped. That crack was such a resoundingly satisfying sound! That day my BIL won. He claimed the luck that the wishbone would bring. But, that meal, I realized just how lucky I was to sit and enjoy such a healthy hearty meal with them. That wishbone was the first bone I ever broke in my life and that’s saying a lot because I spent 7 years learning artistic/rhythmic gymnastics.