Eastern Vagabond

Essays on travel, cities, memory, and the unnoticed textures of the world.

Tag: marathon

  • Paper Boats

    I have four tabs open in Chrome. A Google Slide for a presentation coming up at work next week, a paper on macro-human factors in aviation maintenance that’s going to help me with that, a dense Cambridge university publication exploring the relationship between Marxism and Islamic Mysticism that I might give up reading halfway through, and Ghulam Ali’s rendition of Nasir Kazmi’s ghazal Dil mein ek leher si uthi hai abhi on Youtube; his vocal cords doing justice to the word, leher (wave), in eight different styles sweeping me away as if on eight musical waves.

    It’s already 10.30 pm; this day will end like all others. I just want to remind myself that it was a splendid day. What could be more splendid than a bowlful of Nihari for dinner with all its traditional condiments anyway? And a lovely family who’s visited from across the other side of the country to put some life into your painfully expansive apartment?

    I just wish I had spoken up at work when it mattered. When the self-righteous seniors were decimating the junior first-timer on the rostrum, my appreciation of his presentation could have gone a long way for him. But it was too hard to speak up then. And it’s harder still to forgive myself now for having taken the easier path. I think I’ll remember this pain and do what’s right the next time it matters. The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people but because of the silence of good people. If not for myself, then for the world out there. I. Will. Speak. Up.

    I have an early morning speed workout with the boys. The competition will start Dec 2 so we don’t have much time left. Every mile is counting now. I have not been in such great shape in the past 5 years and if I sail through the 10,000m race, which I very much hope to, I am packing my bags for the Naltar marathon coming up in Jan next year. That would be exquisite; the master of all adventures. There are lots of ifs and buts at the moment. That I remain injury-free. That my boss understands what running the highest marathon in the world means to me at this point in time and spares me for the month-long high-altitude training preceding the race. They say when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Whatever happens, I have something to look forward to and that should suffice for a good night’s sleep.

  • The Last Warrior

    Not until i had actually plunged into that untouched valley, did I know there could exist such a divine beauty in the heart of the metropolitan. It’s quite hard to imagine an outback bordered by commercial city area on one side and a state-of-the-art university on the other. In my hunt to run and explore beautiful places around, i had almost given up on the idea of treading a hinterland ever. But last week just after Asar, as i casually walked towards one of the lost gates of the university which was more like a tall, rusty scrap of cast iron and opened to nobody-knew-where, i suddenly found myself face to face with that baffling phenomenon; you know, a-herd-of-cows-grazing-in-a-pasture-right-in-the-middle-of-an-urban-world phenomenon!

    I ran through the huge meadow, mud-houses and grazing cattle and climbed up a hill overlooking the buzzing city. The contrast was painfully stark. Just across the road, the icons of the civilized world stood tall. The meadow on my back was perhaps the last retreat of the handful warriors who were yet not ready to give in to urbanization – and if you get a chance to run through the scarcely inhabited settlement, you’ll know why. Urban life-style maybe too catchy for some, there still are people who just can’t resist the charms of primitive living. Standing there for a moment, i felt just like Jaguar-Paw when he stood facing the sea looking at conquistador ships anchored off the coast and Spanish people moving ashore. He had to decide whether he wanted to embrace the unknown, dazzling civilization ahead or retreat to his woods. Without a sign of remorse, he had quietly turned back. The setting sun that day, saw me doing the same.

  • My Long Run

    A rare picture of Kashmir Highway under-construction.
    A rare picture of Kashmir Highway under-construction.

    I have just begun. The road outside the campus gate is so steep, I can imagine it still running through those ancient mountains now been flattened to make room for the city skyline. Though it’s not prudent to do a long run against the clock, that’s the only option I’m left with when in a rush to get somewhere before it’s dark. Once I get past those initial steep miles, the run is predominantly steady-state. So you don’t have to do much except glide along on the windy highway. While gliding past the honking cars, traffic jams, slums and naked children with running noses, my mind slowly drifts off to a semiconscious neutral state and some of the most amazing things happen in there: weird ideas and secret jokes once shared between my old school-fellows which never got old enough through the ebb and flow of life descend my numbing mind in a strange harmony in an almost mystic fashion. A subtle smile creeps across my face. I look at the bewildered faces of the pedestrians passing by who see me running almost daily and yet can’t resist their impulse to find some furious, man-eating abomination chasing me every time I rush past them: they will never be able to make themselves comfortable with a lone guy running madly on the highway, I think, amused.

    The white fluffs of clouds dance playfully as the sky puts up a lovely show of colors. What a perfect adieu, I think while running placidly through the dusty orange glow of the setting sun. Soon the dusk will fall and the darkness will gradually envelop me. And I have always loved that for it always conceals my agony so comfortingly that I no longer need to pull up a nice face for anyone. The darkness is burgeoning swiftly. It’s late, I think and pick up the pace, and a sudden feeling of utter loneliness presses at my heart like an abandoned child waking up to realize that he may not make it back home ever. Racing the crawling cars and rickshaws and dodging the cyclists, off I kick through the final miles until the destination arrives. I look down at my watch. The sticky thing wrapped around my wrist, now dripping with sweat, tells me I have been all my myself for more than an hour.

    The suffering is immense but then that’s what being human is all about, I recall her saying and smile wearily. I might never run out of reasons to run.