It was a hot and humid August night. The plump fleshy clouds refused to melt, leaving us the raw deal of sweat oozing down people’s brows instead.
The busy boisterous streets in the throbbing heart of Delhi had just started to settle down. The blocked clogged bloated roads took a deep breath for the night. But it did not allow everyone the same luxury. Remnants of the busy workday still littered the streets; hundreds of men dressed in their pastel shirts, pants and sandals, smooth from wear and embroidered after the nth tear, ran, jumped, shuffled, crawled, slid, climbed, pounced their way on to the nearest public transport. Glum faces hung from fat necks, straining their eyes, twiddling their thumbs on the scratched glass surface of their giant phones in their small nooks of the buses and metros.
Amongst them all, there was a middle-aged man on the sidewalk. He wore a crisp light blue shirt with rough grey khaki trousers and those familiar scruffy brown sandals with his sandpaper toes sticking out. He was balding. His forehead was a landscape with ridges and valleys, like rings in the cross-section of a tree trunk, marking the decades of worries he had grappled through. He carried a rugged black shoulder bag in his hand which swung to and fro as he floundered, stumbled and chased the bus that overshot the bus station. A humdrum horde of similar nameless anonymous men groped, stomped and climbed over each other piling on into a bus like candies overflowing from a toddler’s pockets.
Outside the plastic laminated glass of the metro, I saw a group of children — running, jumping, shuffling, crawling, sliding, climbing, pouncing. But their run, jump, shuffle, crawl, slide, climb, pounce was not one of drudgery. Their eyes were not glazed. Their breaths were not laboured. Their legs did not buckle. Their sprint was not a clumsy hobble, an embarrassing grapple for control over their lives.
As a kid, I always wanted to get to places faster, quicker. I could not wait. I could not be slowed down. I could not, for the life of me, figure out why anyone would ever stroll. Who were these giants three times my size who insisted on moving so slow? Why did they not run even though they possessed such herculean speed and strength?
Which bring me back to the question I found myself pondering over— When did I Stop Running? I wish I had an answer to that.
I wish I could remember when I stopped running.
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