Pressed for health

There’s a whole lot of ways to get healthy, but nothing beats eating right. And city-based couple Jegatha Muralidharan and Karthikeyan Krishnan’s café, Pulp Pressery, does that with its in-house cold pressed juices and healthy foods. A former “software guy”, Karthik’s interest in fitness took over when Jegatha began the Zumba exercise fitness movement in the city after moving here in 2011.

“I had won the India Interna-tional Champion-ship in Latin dance in 2010, that was a turning point. At that point of time, Zumba was a big hit in Goa (where I’m from) and there was nothing happening in Hyderabad, so I thought I’d come to Hyderabad and start doing it here,” Jegatha says. Karthik took up a course called Plate by Zumba last year, which got him hooked onto nutritional diets, and began taking corporate classes after getting his certification.

“After that, I saw that there were not too many healthy-eating places in Hyderabad and I discovered cold press juices, and so I thought of opening a place where one could get these juices along with food — regular food, but made in a healthy way,” Karthik says. Fitness has always been the central theme in the couple’s lives, with dance bringing them together at a Salsa Congress in Goa in 2010.

“We love dancing, we’ve been teaching and performing, and we even compete in competitions. Our life is centred around dance and everything else works around that. Our ideal holiday is a dance congress,” Karthik says with laugh. In addition to the café, the two also run a dance studio along with Zumba classes. “We hold special sessions once in a few months for nutrition among others, to check up on clients about even the smallest of details like wearing the right kind of shoes. Fitness is not about attending a session, burning calories and leaving it there,” adds Jegatha, who has reached the level of “Zumba Jammer”.