Diary of a Jogger

“Dude, the guy with pissi…”I took a shallow breath of warm air before finishing the sentence. I read somewhere that joggers ought to take long deep breaths, for the lungs expand and trapped oxygen suffuses through the body to burn fat. “what about him?” Sahu inquired, he was jogging on the other side of the brief line of palm trees on an elevation near the entrance of the village. Fifty feet away, on the track that ran through the field with dry twigs and dead leaves, I shouted “I cannot recall his name” I continued after inhaling what I felt was sufficient oxygen for a phrase or two. Sahu began “there is boos….” I cut him short with premeditated remonstrance: “listen” I said “of the four that includes pissi, one is boos, second one is rahul and the third?” I closed the phrase with the shrill intonation of a question. We were near the U-turn, it was only the first round, and I was determined to carry on for two more rounds, while sahu was keeping himself content with another round. Our paths crossed, evening breeze was settling on the fields around us; through the thick shrubs, a frog leapt out onto the pathway; a dhoti clad man with a woman seated on the pillion drove his Bajaj Pulsar past me; above us, the tall palm trees with leaf less pale brown trunks stood motionless. “dude, the Bengali guy…” I added after careful thought. Our communication was marred, for we had to shout at the top of our voice, and we were panting like street dogs on hot summer days. “siddesh” Sahu exclaimed.

This was in the month of April. But, before Jogging reached a crescendo of charm with our batch, like the menacing waves of the ocean that have humble beginnings, when I was introduced to Jogging, there were but two joggers-Vamsee and sahu. The day I began jogging, in the month of February, we took the road into Kunathur village. The road creased through swaying fields on either sides punctured occasionally by a bore well, a lamp post or a compound wall. A black cantankerous dog greeted us at the entrance, it would walk us till the perimeter of its territory marked by its shroud of urine and retreat into the den. With the notorious dog behind us, we entered into the village passing across women with grass heaps on their head; little children and old men walking lugubriously behind sheep with sticks in their hands; and men on carts with heavy white bulls balancing the thick cart shaft above their neck. The road went around the village’s temple before which the young played cricket, and the old sat idly by the temple’s entrance chatting up and smoking beedi. A little away from the cricket ground, a woman seated by the roadside sold dead fish, small and medium. Newly married young men carried plastic water cans on bicycles- with water can necks tied to a rope; the couple lifted one can each and rested the connecting rope on the steel shaft between the handle and seat- two sets of two cans, one behind the seat and one before. The man dragged his bicycle cautiously lest he drop and break them all up; his wife waited behind by the tap for her husband to come back and refill. Our track finally took us into the brownish plateau ending in the black sediment filled dry waters before the Kalpakkam power plant compound wall.

Sahu was consistent, he jogged faster and never seemed to tire; Vamsee outrun Sahu at times, but on most of the occasions, our erratic run ups ended in a patterned return through the village. Sahu and Vamsee ran together, side by side while I trailed behind by a good hundred feet. On our way back, we usually ran into the photogenic female and her beau. The village women furtively glanced at her gait as she slowly trotted like an antelope in wet African grass-she looked like a rather effeminate male; slim built, sharp features, strict posture and fuller bottoms in red trousers that exposed her slanted calves. she had the nape of a nymph and skin of a seductress.

“We should try and explore one of these tracks on one of these days” I pointed out and Sahu agreed. That day, Vamsee was in Hyderabad. Two of us, we hesitantly stepped into the wilderness facing the entrance of our college, on the other side of ECR. With half measures, Sahu noted “we don’t have the time to explore and retreat in case we don’t find the track appropriate”. Ah! What was to come! Neither of us could believe our eyes, that exploration took us into the woods and we stuck with the track for the rest of our jog time at college. Huge expanse of land; clean track and clear air with plentiful of oxygen. To one side of the track were the fields and the ECR, to the other side was picturesque horizon filled with tall trees on the rocky bank of a once lively lake. The trees grew up into the blue sky and moon escaped the dreamy horizon to perch himself atop on the lonely sky littered heavily with stars, and the embarrassed sun drowned himself underneath the ground. The enchanting horizon produced by the full moon in sublime power bid farewell to us every evening as we left the woods to reach college.

It was this track that produced lot of joggers. Notable ones being Mr. Mishra, Mr. Sikdar and his female, Colonel and PD and two gentlemen from G1 G2. It was here that we all relished the nature about us; we slowly got rid of the pause at the U-turn beneath the village, then we got rid of the village itself and jogged twice to cover up for the village. The woman living in the house by the entrance of the village came out with a door mat to beat it against the wall, as if to summon earthly powers from underneath the walls; in the village an old man eyed us curiously from behind the walls of the township under construction; teenagers of the village invited us to play volley ball (sahu obliged once); some one snooped on and eventually confronted us (Vamsee and I), turned out that he worked in our college, laid roofs and foundation. “Do you know this guy” Sahu inquired once pointing to the painted portrait of a round faced tamil politician on a shop’s wall. “Yes, I am familiar” I replied, I do not recall now, the name of the person or his stature, only his round face is frozen in my memory, unchanged.

After Vamsee returned home, Sahu and I supplemented jogging with sauntering through annupuram colony. We bought three varieties of Vodka that night-smirnoff, golden moments and peper vanilla. Jena liked the pepper one, even Surya sipped once or twice. Later at coconut, with our trousers folded above the knees and holding sippers in one hand, Sahu and I walked along the beach. Bare footed, with waves breaking on our naked limbs and feet sinking deeper into the sand, we covered six kms from coconut to Mayajal. That night, we came across an overturned ship by the bank, discarded and rusted; it lay there in the sand with warm wind and salty water corroding it slowly. “This guy is never gonna catch any of these little buggers” I commented referring to the shaggy dog prancing wildly to catch small crabs by the beach. Blenched with fear, Sahu jumped across, at the sight of a dark wooden stick washed ashore by the waves. Under crescent moon, in the dark, with sand tugging into the folds of our trousers, we walked to the tasmac beside Mayajal. We bought half a bottle of RC and returned to resort, only to find that nothing whatever could suffice the euphoria of the evening, for Sahu bagged TCS offer that night after returning.

“Third round?” Vamsee enquired on the first day of my three rounds. With modest beginnings, when I look back today, I gasp in dismay at what I have accomplished so far. Today I can run over twelve kms on a stretch without pausing at a decent pace.