Desi Making Waves

By Elaine G. Flores

Anuja Rajendra: Making (Bolly)Fitness Fun

Anuja Rajendra, founder of the Bollywood dance exercise company, BollyFit, grew up dancing with her sisters. "My parents used to drive us an hour and a half away every Saturday to learn classical Indian dance. We were raised in Okemos, Michigan, [and] the closest teacher was in the Detroit area. Nobody else we knew was learning dance, and our parents thought it was important to instill some sort of culture in us," she recalls. "They'd come all the way from India, and I think, wanted to hold on to their roots."

These lessons instilled a love of dance in Rajendra and laid the foundations for a future career in dance instruction. But the road from childhood dance lessons to her work with BollyFit was far from smooth for Rajendra.

"My sisters and I, The Rajendra Sisters, had a dance troupe, and then I continued to dance in college. I studied engineering at the University of Michigan and found myself always more drawn to the dance programs than my other studies. I remember having a serious conversation with my parents, 'Am I going to go to Bollywood or am I going to look for an engineering job?'"

Ultimately, says Rajendra, "I decided that I wasn't going to Bollywood, that I wasn't really interested in that lifestyle. It was the dance I was interested in versus the acting. So I got a real job in the corporate world but was still always dancing."

But when tragedy struck, Rajendra stopped dancing for ten years. She explains, "Life was going on its way and then my middle sister, Rachana — she was three years older than me — she was killed in a car accident. It was quite devastating, and I found that my focus had changed. It was really important for me to share my sister with the world. I knew that she wasn't there in the physical world, but her energy was, and is, here — the effervescence and just the unique, wonderful personality that I wanted to share."

So Rajendra first devoted herself to honoring her sister with a small business. "It was difficult to think about going back to a regular job. I wanted to help other people enjoy their time with their loved ones. So, I opened up Moon-baked Creations Art Lounge and Cafe.... It was really a wonderful way to share her [Rajendra's sister] and people could come in and enjoy time together with their family and friends — and they would always have that memory."

While this business provided solace for a grieving Rajendra, she soon realized that it wasn't meeting her needs. "I had it [the lounge and cafe] for two and a half years, and over the course of that time I realized that as much as it had served its purpose [honoring my sister's life and legacy], it wasn't the right business for me long-term. I [had] met my future husband, and we had plans to get married. I thought that letting go of the business would be like letting go of my sister. But I had an epiphany one day that my sister isn't in these walls. Her spirit is beyond the company. So when that struck me, I sold the company, got married and sort of moved on."

Two years ago, Rajendra founded Bollyfit, an energetic dance class that has been steadily growing in popularity in the Ann Arbor area. She describes BollyFit as "fitness through dance. It's for anyone who wants to get healthy from the inside out without the dread that's typically associated with health."

But Rajendra is reluctant to call her classes a workout. "It's all the benefits of a workout," she notes, "But I'm actually going to take the word 'workout' out from anything on our website. You get the benefit of a workout, but workout by definition is something that's worse — almost something that's dreaded. And people are really different when they approach BollyFit. It's something they want to do versus, 'Oh, God! I need a crutch.'"

BollyFit, says Rajendra, is for everyone: "Come as you are. It can be for someone who's training for a triathlon as much as somebody who hasn't exercised more than going up and down the stairs in a house for years, so come as you are. We have people come and get dressed up for class because it's something fun to do — it's kind of the highlight of the day."

Additionally, Rajendra appreciates the response of BollyFit students to their experiences in the classes. "It's a very collective energy in a light sort of way. People come and have a good time and don't know they're sweating until the end. And somehow the connection between people in class happens and that's been one of the magical pieces that's been evolving and propelling it forward."

Like many good ideas, the beginning of BollyFit happened serendipitously for Rajendra. She recalls, "I had had two children. I'd danced as a child and stopped dancing as an adult for over ten years and gained a lot of weight with my two pregnancies: 60 pounds with the first and 45 pounds in the second. They were 18 months apart, and for the first time in my life, I wasn't feeling healthy. When you have kids, it's really hard to get out of the house and find the right things where you feel healthy. I found myself turning on the music and dancing again, and the weight started shedding."

For years, friends had been begging Rajendra to teach Bollywood-style dance classes. "I went back for some classical training after a ten-year hiatus, just to get my feet wet again and just to have fun for myself. Then I decided to teach a class at the local Y[MCA], a Bollywood Bhangra dance, which I developed. My friends — actually a lot of non-Indian friends who knew I used to dance — were moms looking for something fun to do and said, 'Why don't you teach a class?' And that's how it was born. I started this class and all my friends signed up and there was a wait-list — and that's how it evolved."

Rajendra's classes were immediately popular. "They asked me to teach a second class and then another location asked me to teach. We didn't have a business name or anything, it was really just something for fun."

But Rajendra soon realized that her idea had more promise than fun alone. "After about a year into it, we decided we needed a logo; we needed a website. We started having some events coming up, and one of the students actually developed the logo and set up the web site and that's how we got going."

One of the biggest challenges for would-be exercisers, according to Rajendra, is attitude and the perception that exercise is unpleasant. This is especially challenging for moms. But these obstacles can be circumvented by engaging in enjoyable, not arduous, activities.

"I used to get on a treadmill and run, forcing myself to put on my shoes and go and do that. It takes more motivation to do that when you're a mom because you don't have the time and you're tired already. Dance was something that happened quite naturally. Nobody was telling me I had to. I didn't set out to do it — to lose weight per se — but I ended up enjoying it. When you do things without an attachment to the result, that's a very Indian philosophy — you do the action for the sake of the action, not for the results of action [and] just enjoy the process. That's how I approached dance without attaching anything to the outcome. And then the outcome naturally happened: the enjoyment happened, the weight shed and something about the energy attracted other people and other people are having the same experience. It's not just about a dance class. What we have is really creating the right balance and experience for each person. They get the results, but they are not doing it for the results."

Rather than worrying about the future of BollyFit, Rajendra chooses to live in the moment. "If you asked me a few years ago [about the future]," she says, "my response would be very different. I'd say, 'We're going to do this and this and this and franchise.' But I'm very focused on the now and just enjoying where we’re at. If we can just do what we're doing well, I take it one class at a time, one move at a time, one stretch at a time. And things are naturally progressing.... What we're doing right now is continuing to focus on making each experience a wonderful one for the students we have and at the same time, our summer plan is to develop a DVD because people are asking me for it. And we're developing instructor classes. I try to think naturally and organically — it's almost like the carpet is laid out for you and you take steps versus trying to roll something out. I would love to hear from your readership [about] who would be interested in bringing BollyFit to their communities."

To find out more about BollyFit, check out http://www.bollyfit.com/.

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