Last week, I went to Decathlon to buy a pair of socks.
But before I proceed, let me tell you how to find out whether you are lower middle class or middle class. If you buy one pair of socks, you are lower middle class…middle-class people always buy socks in packs of three or five.
If you have been buying only one pair, no worries. Just work harder from Monday.
Getting back, as I said, mine was a small, achievable middle-class goal.
Buy socks and get back home with my bank balance intact.
But Decathlon is not a shop. It is a trap designed for middle-aged men who still believe their bodies are just one purchase away from becoming athletic.
The moment a 51-year-old man enters Decathlon, something happens to him.
His knees may be making the sound of old cupboard hinges. His back may require two pillows, one hot water bottle, and three assurances from his wife (I didn’t want to bring in Rekha…but here she enters the scene!) before he sleeps.
His stomach may have moved from “slightly visible” to an “union territory ruled by a Lieutenant Governor,” but once inside Decathlon, he becomes an athlete.
Inside Decathlon, every middle-aged man walks as if his coach has unofficially told him that he has been selected for the Olympics, but the official confirmation is yet to come.
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Before I tell you what happened inside the shop, let me show off some general knowledge.
Decathlon is named after the Olympic event where one athlete participates in ten track-and-field events, which include running, jumping, throwing, and suffering.
Daley Thompson, who won Olympic decathlon gold medals in 1980 (Moscow) and 1984 (Los Angeles), is often referred to as the most complete man (besides the Raymond guy, of course).
Which is why, when Bruce Jenner, who won the 1976 Olympic men’s decathlon gold, transitioned into Caitlyn Jenner in 2015, everybody was taken aback. Looks like Bruce didn’t feel like a complete man.
That is what I like about Decathlon. Even its history has transformation. You enter as one person and come out as someone else.
In my case, I entered as a man who needed socks and came out believing I could trek in the Himalayas, cycle to Pondicherry, learn boxing, play table tennis, and swim professionally.
If you look closely, you will realize that Decathlon is a stadium with billing counters. By the time you reach checkout, your smartwatch will say, “Workout detected.”
And I think they purposefully keep the store’s layout confusing. You can never predict which item will be where. Like the devil, the store believes in temptation.
I went looking for the socks section. At least, that was the plan.
But I knew before I reached the socks, I would have to pass running shoes, trekking bags, gym equipment, cycles, yoga mats, swimming goggles, cricket bats, footballs, boxing gloves, and products whose purpose I won’t understand but still want to buy because they look healthy.
At my first stop, I picked up a resistance band.
A resistance band is basically a bigger rubber band. That’s all.
You hold it in your hand and stretch it slightly, and it is supposed to help you.
I tried…and felt my biceps bulge. Immediately, I felt athletic.
At 51, that is all it takes. A small stretch and some imagination.
The band said “medium resistance,” which I liked. Because I don’t want my life to be too easy or too difficult. Maybe that’s why I think my middle name should have been Goldilocks (if you get it, you get it!)
I stretched it again and imagined myself doing workouts on my balcony. Morning sunlight hits my body as I swipe the sweat from my forehead and wipe it on my track pants.
As I am visualizing, I can see discipline in my eyes. This is going to be good, I say to myself.
And that’s when Rekha opens the balcony door and says, “Don’t just stand there…pull the resistance band apart.”
See…it is so difficult to write anything without her making an entry.
Anyway, I put the resistance band back on the counter. Not all dreams need to fly….some need to be crushed right there.
Then I saw the trekking gear. There were backpacks, hiking shoes, jackets, water bottles, caps, torches, walking sticks, and tents.
I could see myself standing on a mountain, wearing a jacket, looking into the distance like a man who has conquered nature.
In reality, I get breathless while searching for the TV remote under the sofa.
But Decathlon does not sell reality. It sells possibility. So I looked at a trekking shoe.
And what is it with Decathlon and its brands – Quechua, Kalenji, Domyos, B’Twin, Kiprun, etc.
Nobody knows how to pronounce these names properly.
“Do you have this in size UK 8?” I asked the sportsman turned salesperson.
“Which one, sir?”
“That…Kwe…Kee…Koo…that mountain brand.”
While trying not to insult me, the salesman politely said, “Quechua, sir.”
I nodded as if that was exactly what I was about to say.
Since I couldn’t pronounce the name, I kept it back. If at all, my friends said, ‘Hey, nice shoes…what brand are these?” I didn’t want to struggle with the name.
And don’t even get me started on ‘Kalenji’ – it sounds like the name of a Tamil villain in a Vijay movie (if you haven’t been following the news…he is now our CM) who is now retired and running a gym.
And B’Twin? B’Twin is Decathlon’s bike brand, and the name sounds like “between.”
As in, “I am currently between the bike shop and my house because my chain just fell off again.”
Did you know that B’Twin is the only bike brand that requires an apostrophe and a capital letter in the middle?
As I stood in front of a 100 cycles, wondering if I should become a cyclist, I realised that a cycle is like marriage.
You think the main expense is getting it into your life. You don’t realize it then, but as long as the cycle is with you will keep paying for accessories, maintenance, upgrades, emotional damage, and things you didn’t know existed before commitment.
At some point, I reached the table tennis section. This was emotionally difficult for me.
Because once, I had gone to Decathlon and came back with a table tennis table.
Yes, I am not joking. Because once inside Decathlon, I started believing that our family needed an indoor sporting culture.
The children were young then, and I told myself, “Instead of wasting time on phones and TV, we will play table tennis as a family.”
It sounded beautiful. In my imagination, we were laughing, bonding, smashing, improving reflexes, and becoming one of those modern families who say things like, “At our house, screen time is limited.”
In reality, the table was so big that our kids had to start sleeping in the living room.
For the first two weeks, we played. Third week, my kids kept their school bags on it.
In the fourth week, dried and folded clothes started appearing.
This is exactly the path our treadmill had taken a few years back.
By now, I had reached the boxing section. If you are a lady reading this, you won’t understand…but we men love being strong and unbeatable. Most of us have a devil inside who wants to be the best fighter there ever was.
Maybe that’s why when I was around 40 years old, I bought a boxing bag and hung it from my study.
As I stood looking at the black and red boxing gloves, I felt a bit vulnerable.
“What if we are on a road trip and while passing through a lonely stretch, a couple of hooligans stop the car, and make a run for Rekha’s gold necklace?” I wondered. I will definitely need to fight them – punch them right in the face.
I should have killed the thought right there, but didn’t. At 51, no man should try boxing gloves unless he has full medical insurance and no witnesses.
I wore one pair and looked in the mirror. For three seconds, I felt dangerous.
Like Mike Tyson. I wanted to find a tall, well-built man and bite his eara nd then win the ‘Sportsman of the Year’ award. Got the joke? Thankfully, there was no one around.
But when I tried removing the gloves, I couldn’t. Tried again, but it didn’t come off.
A small child standing nearby helped me. Nothing destroys masculinity faster than a six-year-old removing boxing gloves from your hand while his mother watches.
“Badly designed gloves,” I whispered to the boy and walked away.
I had already spent 25 minutes inside Decathlon, and still hadn’t found socks. That is Decathlon’s genius. You will find scuba-diving equipment in Chennai, but the socks you came to buy will be hidden like temple treasure.
Finally, after walking what felt like 5 kilometres inside the store, I found the socks. How I wish I hadn’t found them.
If you are a man and have been married for a while, you may have lost the ability to make decisions.
So stood there in front of all kinds of socks – running socks, tennis socks, football socks, hiking socks, ankle socks, compression socks. All these socks looked more qualified than me.
I picked one pair. Then I remembered my own theory about middle-class people. Honestly, I don’t want to be a lower-middle-class person…so I picked a pack of three.
If Rekha had to buy a pair of socks, she would have ordered two from Myntra, and two from Amazon…selected the best, and returned the other three.
And here I was wasting 45 minutes in Decathlon for the same pair.
But as I walked out of the sports store, I felt happy. Because sometimes, in middle age, you don’t buy sports equipment….you buy hope.
You buy the belief that under this stomach, behind this back pain, beneath this mild acidity, and behind the cholesterol reports, there is still an athlete hiding.