Breaking free, one step at a time
I was 13 when i started running for the first time. As bizarre as it may sound now, i watched Forrest Gump (1994) on HBO one fine evening and decided to wake up early the following morning. I laced up my pair of white canvas shoes and started running towards the jetty. The distance between my home and the farthest point—after which Trombay creek took over — was about two kilometers. I don’t remember what exactly happened on the very first day of this novel idea but i do know that i kept going. It was summer vacation and i didn’t miss a single morning thereafter, at least not until our school reopened. To increase the distance and my stamina, i began running in the opposite direction before taking a U-turn towards the jetty. It was amazing for several reasons and still, when i think about that phase, what strikes me the most was my infatuation with Tom Hanks’ character in the aforementioned film. He runs and runs and runs only to realize that he was running for no particular reason. I found that bit epiphanic. Ergo, questions abound. Why should there be a goal set behind running a particular distance or in a record time? Shouldn’t running itself be a liberating force good enough to give in? Inside my teeny mind, it made a lot of sense: just running for the sake of running. The lack of rules and expectations freed me from myself. Or maybe it was the freshness of dawn which enchanted me. As if the sunrise belonged to me and me alone. Just as i approached jetty, the ankle-high grass on either side of the paved road, with sunlight fiddling with them, made sure that i don’t miss a morning. The smell of drying fish in the air, the inherent saltiness, everything had a strong gravitation pull toward me. Within a few days, i was showing off an emerging vein on my right calf — a ghost of which is still there — to whoever was willing to see. Once school started, my frequency of runs dropped but i continued whenever possible. The spirit of running was alive even after i moved to a polytechnic college in Nashik. It punctured much later.
I am 31 now and haven’t ran in a long, long while. Chasing local trains in Bombay doesn’t count as running either. In Gurgaon, there are no trains to chase anyway. However, not a day goes by i don’t think of hitting the road. Just that i don’t. Despite waking up every morning between 6.30 and 7, i let my lethargy dictate the terms. It’s criminal, my attitude. I walk to my balcony and notice several young folks in our neighbourhood setting off on their runs. They don’t inspire me. They make me feel sorry for myself. I know beforehand how it feels to run. You start with a jog and slowly and shrewdly test yourself, increasing your pace and demoting your loin, as per the call of the wind. Initially, your lungs are startled by what’s going on and before you know it, they are in sync with your heart. You pant every now and then. You stop sometimes too with hands clasped on your knees. But it’s OK because it’s a comma, not an exclamation mark, or to worse it, a full stop. You pick yourself up and your breathing pattern and run away. Nobody is chasing you, nor are you competing with anybody else. To the sky above, you are merely an exhibition of the evolutionary scales your ancestors touched over the years; no other creature runs the way a human does—provided s/he does. Murakami is 68 and he still runs on a daily basis, a rarity of course, but inspirational nonetheless. I am sure there are others too. Closer home, we’ve got Milind Soman and his beautiful bare-footed mother. I read about wonderful people like them all the time and yet, i don’t run. Somehow, for reasons unknown to my gut, i can’t bring myself to kickstart a new fitness regime. I even bought a pair of blue running shoes last year. As i type, they are collecting dust on the rack. Forget running, they must be begging me to take them for a walk at least. Come to think of it, childhood is filled with so much energy and so little stress that you end up running, if not running around foolishly, whenever you get a chance. Conversely, adulthood is full of stress and so little energy that you end up… like me. If you are lazy piece of crap, that is.
PS. High time i rewatched Forrest Gump run once again. Who knows, it might do the trick!
