Discovering Running

“All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.” ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

It was a wonderful sunday morning and I was moving at an average of 2.5m/s on the roads of Pune University. Around me there were plenty of others, some moving much swifter and some much slower, some much older than me and still moving faster and so on and so forth. Surprisingly, who among the bunch of runners finished in front of me and who finished after, neither concerned me nor did I notice. The aim was to reach the finish line in a healthy time and try to discover & enjoy the void while doing that. If anyone is wondering 'whats happening?' after reading thus far, let me explain, I was participating in a run organized by Pune running and was attempting to run my first quarter marathon.

“The thing about running is once you get a rhythm for your heart and the legs going, you can keep moving forward as long as you want!” Said the gentleman in his fifties who was now running alongside me and happily cheering on the other runners. Well I cannot disagree with him, but go on forever?? Have to say I didn't feel that way after a little more than a hour or so of running, but I plan on exploring running for all its worth to try and discover that rhythm and leg movement that he was talking about. An old man in his late sixties or early seventies passed by. He was running the 21K run. He smiled. In fact, everyone who was running there was smiling, clapping and encouraging each other, especially the ones who are visibly tired but pulling themselves along and all red in the face from the effort. To some, my description of the situation might make all people at the run might seem a little nuts. However, standing by my staunch belief that I am perfectly sane, I can vouch for their sanity.

I am not going on to try and give reasons for how wonderful a feeling it is when you are running and yapity yap yap. Quite frankly, I wouldn't say I know how wonderful a feeling it is and I have nothing to tell anyone about running, let alone promote it. However, the concept of a homemade void filled with my own nostalgic silence does sound intriguing and I hope to one day fully understand what Mr. Murakami was saying and so I shall run till that day and beyond. However till then running will be for me an opportunity to, without judgement, push my limits, a means to keep myself fit to play football, a platform to plug in the earphones and day dream uninterrupted and something to look forward to everyday.

The quarter marathon completed, the next stop was a nice little popular Irani Cafe – Vohumen Cafe. Like in the case with any nice little place in India, this was crowded like a stadium too. A small wait and a Cheese Sandwich, Toast Butter and a Tea later we stepped out. I should probably explain here that by 'we' I mean my friend who had invited me for the run, his colleague whose name I cannot remember for the simple reason that I have a terrible memory and myself. Up came an old lady promptly to us and started chatting away with the colleague of my friend in perfectly good English. I am sure that she picked out this colleague of my friend from our group of three solely because of the fact that she was a female. The lady was by behavior and appearance a beggar and apparently an honest one at that. She had stepped up promptly and explained how she had a job on most days, and how today being a sunday she had no way to earn anything but to dress up in shabby clothes and request kind people like the colleague of my friend for some help. A couple of minutes later the colleague was handing the lady some bananas and buying her a tea. The strange lady proceeded, with a great big cheshire cat smile on her face, to explain that she was a kind soul from Goa, who was cheated by her boyfriend and now without a means to look after herself. At this point I could only come up with three possible explanations for the scenario we were facing

a) We were being taken for a ride by a really great actress who was pointlessly wasting her talent by restricting herself to the streets.

b) There was mental hospital close by with a bunch of nurses running around looking for a missing inmate

c) She was a genuinely honest person.

I decided to not ponder over what was the right answer from the above. Irrespective of the answer she was living life at her own pace and with a smile on face and for that she probably deserved the bananas and the tea.

In all, a nice little sunday morning spent in and around several characters all rolling on at their own pace and resembling smiley's, was a good beginning to the day. Later on in the evening Ryan Giggs, playing his 900th match for Manchester United, scored a last minute winner and my day, which had begun on a good note, ended on a pleasant one too and I decided to sit down and write about it.