Since navigating Andheri station is like running through an obstacle course, it's the perfect gateway to Dr Rishi Prasad's Andheri studio, Mumbai Movement Academy. At the city's first indoor parkour gym, Prasad, 30, climbs a four-poster steel frame like a champ, and swings from one rod to the other like a chimp. "If you look at people doing parkour, they do look like monkeys or cats," he says. "I've always wanted to get the maximum out of my body. I have this fascination of how the body works, how it evolved to be so perfect at specific tasks." It's one of the reasons Prasad became a trained physician as well.

From 9 pm to 7 am, Prasad is in the emergency ward at Vile Parle's Nanavati Hospital, tending blocked arteries; after hours, he teaches parkour, tending to atrophied muscles. He flips between the two careers as easily as he flips on bars. "I started off with medicine thinking that is my career, and parkour is a passion. It turns out, parkour has become more of a career and medicine has become a hobby." As a kid, Prasad was an acrobat/reader. While he loved poring over encyclopaedias and comic books, he also loved climbing walls and swinging from trees. "We had a banyan tree downstairs. I credit that for the start of my parkour journey." He also played football, tennis and basketball. "But, these sports were transient. I played them with enthusiasm, I loved playing them, but they didn't hold my attention for long. Until I found parkour, which was a game changer. This is the longest I've stuck to any sport continuously."