Sunday is meant for staying at home, getting up late instead of typical Bread Butter Breakfast, tastebuds need big spread on dining table something spicy, something tangy. But if you sacrifice this luxury for a 5 km health walk then meeting a girl from Newyork, doing reverse drain was really a double pleasure. Today, she compelled walkathaners at Bandra Kurla Complex to dance to her masala bhangra beats. This girl Sarina Jain is from USA . She has devised a fitness programme based on typical Punjab da Bhangra and bollywood tunes. She calls it Masala Bhangra and it has become a hit not only in Indian diaspora but attracted lot of cross over health freak generation.
It is no surprising that holistic spritual guru Deepak Chopra interviewed her, lot of American newspapers and magazines also widely covered Sarina and her Masala Bhangra. Her fitness products are a craze at online shopping platform Amazon.
"Initially my Indian aunties and uncles didn’t believe in me at first,” shared Sarina , who started teaching aerobics when she was in high school. “They would say, ‘We’re so happy you’ve found this hobby, little Sarina, but please go get a job now. Please get married,’?” she chuckles while talking to me at MMRDA ground.
Now in her mid-30s, Sarina is here to host her teacher training in the homeland of Bollywood and Bhangra. She hopes to make a very real impact on the health of the country, which counts heart disease as its leading cause of death. “Indians eat a lot of rich food and don’t like spending an hour on the treadmill, but they love Bhangra and Bollywood music,” says Anusha Sipahimalani, an aerobics instructor here in Mumbai who has signed up for Jain’s training programme.
Sarina was raised in an Indian community in California’s Orange County, and her father always emphasized the importance of weaving Indian culture into her Western life. “He’s the sole reason why I started Masala Bhangra,” she says of her dad, who was 47 when he died of a heart attack. “I thought, if Dad worked out a little bit more, his heart might have been stronger.” She also wanted to inspire others in her community to be more active. “I felt like I had to get these people moving,” Jain says.
With these goals in mind, she combined Bhangra and Bollywood dance moves into her 32-step, 500-calorie-burning aerobics workout. Since then, Sarina says with moist voice she has scored her own show on the Discovery Channel’s Fit TV, introduced Masala Bhangra to Crunch gyms, created an official Masala Bhangra teacher-training manual, and filmed workout videos on Bollywood sets.
But Sarina's success had met with backlash from Bhangra purists, who are turned off by her glitzy style. Protesters bashed her workout on bhangrateams forum.com. “They would write things like, ‘We should slit her throat so she can’t say Balle Balle anymore,’” she explains. Her detractors were mainly young college kids from all-male Bhangra competition teams in New York’s Desi community, who blamed her for threatening their efforts to keep Punjabi culture alive in the U.S.—though Jain was motivated by the same goal. “I would never want to defame my culture. I’m too proud,” she says.
Though Jain’s workout is essentially an amped-up version of dancing at an Indian wedding, her aunties are holding out for the real thing. “In India, age is a stigma,” she explains. “I love what I do and I’m very happy, but I’m also not married. If you’re not married [in India], you’re not considered successful.”
She sometimes looks to Jane Fonda, her ’80s fitness counterpart, for inspiration. “She revolutionized the aerobic world,” Jain says. “I’m not making millions of dollars like she did, but I’m proud to be the pioneer of Indian dance in the American fitness industry.”
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