Training Begins

Dear dedicated reader,

It is only proper that I begin with the context: a number of the more athletically motivated fellows staff have decided that they are going to run a half marathon in February to raise money for Nanubhai and as a way to keep fit and motivate themselves. While seated around the dinner table in the Bajipura apartment, infected with their raucous enthusiasm, I decided that if my staff could do it, well by golly so could I.

Since that time roughly two weeks ago, the general upheaval which characterizes my life in this country has come in to play and by fate’s roll of the dice I no longer live in our Bajipura apartment and have moved into the downstairs bedroom of our two fellows who live in Surat, the nearest city where we have one site at P.R. Khatiwala High School. Now that I’m located in a city, I have access to all sorts of amenities within a 5 minute autorickshaw ride of the house such as a real grocery store, a mall, a coffee shop, and most of all, a gym.

All of this contributed to the optimism which prompted me to decide to go running in the area surrounding our house.

I start out blissfully content with the morning sun shining down on our porch, the act of stretching bringing on that sense of enlightened anticipation that it always fills me with. With a flick of my finger, my ipod brings the upbeat strains of Natasha Bedinfield into my ears, telling me that not only is this morning beautiful, but ‘no one else could feel it for [me]’ and that I should ‘live my life with arms wide open.’ Sentimental state that I am in, it only heightens my euphoria.

After a brief stretch of the limbs, I set out gently from our porch, jogging my way through gated society and observing the mid-morning activities of our neighbors: hair-brushing, hanging clothes on the line, talking on the phone. I feel almost transported back to the Porter Street hill in Somerville down which I had to go for all my morning and weekend runs, that sense of energy filling my limbs as I strode downhill, until I finally hit the turn onto the main Highland Ave and set off on the real test of endurance. It is like that this morning, hitting the road that leads past Khatiwala High School (which we live behind) until I arrive at the main highway.

The first reservations set in as I observe a group of men sitting shirtless by the side of the road, the pick axes by their side indicating previous intense physical labor, the glistening of their skin the sun corroborating this assumption. As I put one foot in front of the other and naturally speed up as if to prove something, I can’t help but register the absurdity of my running to compensate for me sedentary lifestyle. No matter, I think, push on.

The real uncertainty hits as I realize that I am going about the same speed as a stringy man in a torn shirt ahead of me pushing a loaded down flatbed pushcart to which he is applying all his bodily strength to move its reluctant wagon wheels forward. To avoid comparison, I speed up, which of course leads to my lungs starting to burn and the slowing of my pace as I turn around and head back in the other direction.

Surat, you should know, dear reader, was 7 years ago proclaimed the most polluted city in India. While that title since has been bestowed upon some other hardworking and deserving city, the smog stained buildings and the thick haze hanging over the highway despite the sunny morning make it easy to see how that might have been the case. Like Providence, everyone claims that Surat has come so far, but I can attest that they are a long way from ‘Water-Fire’ like rebirth.

At this point in the run, despite Katy Perry enticing me onwards, I slow to a walk, my lungs really burning and the remnants of last week’s cold blocking my nose. Whether this halt is a result of my general poor level of fitness or Surat’s smog or the rising temperature of India at mid-morning or that cigarette I smoked when I was Thailand, it is hard to know; but at this point I am definitely feeling my optimism begin to curl into a ball and hide behind the cloudiness building up in my head.

According to my rough estimate, I have been running for 10 minutes.

I begin to do a sort of compromised run-walk that pacifies my sense of determination as well as my failing body until through the motivating beats of Jordin Sparks I hear jeering coming from the side of the road. I turn my head in time to see a bus full of private school boys, arms flailing out of the window to catch my attention, urging me onwards. I begin to miss the sweet, adorable faces of my students at Kadod and mentally curse the obnoxiousness of the over-privileged adolescent. Until, of course, I remember that I was one.

The nail in the coffin is a number of Rajasthani women, heads covered with the tails of their saris, giving me a look of horror as I shuffle onward. I smile in a lopsided way and slow to a real walk, turning back down the road to the house in embarrassed defeat and mentally filing this under “Notable experiences” in sub-category “Reasons I need to join a proper gym.”

Best,
Cat