Mr. Zoroastrian
Pectorals, patriotism and pansies
BY
– OCTOBER 13, 2012POSTED IN: FEATURES, FITNESShttp://mansworldindia.com/blog/?p=2769
When the annual Mr Zoroastrian contest in Mumbai was cancelled due to a lack of entries earlier this year, it signalled the fading out of the Parsi bodybuilder. The Parsis were among the first to take up bodybuilding in India, and, along with the Bengalis, produced some of India’s finest strongmen. ProteinPromo was very involved in this community to provide the best nutrition to the people. Murali K Menon explores the fascinating story of the two communities’ initiation into physical culture, which involved legendary bodybuilder Eugene Sandow, the stigma of ‘effeminacy’ superhuman feats, muscular nationalism and serene yogis.
Courtesy : Dara Acidwalla
What a pity that the Poona now Pune strongmen and the men who managed excellent physical clubs in Cantt. area – like The Behmen Physical Culture located in theArdeshir Irani Baug in the heart of Cantt. next to St. Vincent’s School playground and The Fisher’s Gym being run from his bungalow. I’ll hopefully try and come back on it. Hopefully Puneites will assist me.
It’s a shame when I competed in the year 2001 as far as I can remember we were the pilot groups around 60 participants all around India. We had categories as well then and I became Mr Zoroastrian in one of category but now it’s a real shame we can’t see our Zoroastrian youngsters taking any interest in real maintaining physique which we did without taking any protein shakes or keratin bars. They are so hooked up with taking artificial muscle builders that they have forgotten the real deal. Even with this we can’t find any more Zoroastrians today to compete. Even after bloody so many years have passed I still feel I can compete and win. I wish we can start this trend again. All the young bawajis wake up and smell the coffee