If I write any further, my mother will think that my sole mission with this post is to reduce her street cred in the lanes of Mothers-with-Marriageable-Betas. But truth be told, Alpha her kid is not, and admittedly, as an appreciator of alliteration and puns, a Beta beta has a nice ring to it.
I’m gifted, both genetically and
emotionally, to be asked to field in a game of cricket in seventh grade PE
period, and make the spectators go aah-ooh when I run after the ball beyond the
boundary, and throw it to cover a distance of 5 cubits between myself and the
stumps at an angle of twenty-five degrees instead of ninety. Being promoted to
the Man-of-the-Match-esque title, “Beech
ka Bichhu”, I think I was actually glad that I’d get two shots at batting,
and the perks of a Bhatta Ball – with
an occasional try-ball at the beginning of each inning.
Football was closer to my heart
though. I would run after the ball for five minutes like it was the final
episode of Survivor: St. Columba’s School, and soon realize that the point of
the game was to increase the heat in your chest to a Fahrenheit that would
qualify for a hit reference in a Bipasha Basu starrer Omkara song. I would fall
to the ground (for dramatics, because attention-seeking bitch), holding my
chest with a heart that would thump like Skrillex deciding never to drop the
bass. Open my shirt buttons and you would see redness like I tore my chest
apart like Hanuman, apart from witnessing too much chest hair for a twelve year
old… the sport was closer to my heart, I told you.
Over the years, and especially
while I was taking my CA final exams, I realized that my body was actually
doing a Benjamin Button, with returning baby fat and all. In an attempt to not reach
a condition where a third person would do my washy-washy, I decided to reverse
the reverse-ageing and, contrary to popular belief of every single joint in my
knee, to take up a sport.
So I took up one which would
allow me to not give an unfair disadvantage to others and be magnanimous like
Arnold Schwarzenneger.
I started running.
What they call jogging.
Or what they actually call
panting for breath while Lady Gaga’s Applause plays in your ears to build
tempo, but the only tempo you can relate to is Ashok Leyland.
In the dark.
When no one would be in the park.
To mistake me for someone in need
of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Not that I was getting any while not panting
for one.
So, I would run in the moonlight
of October 2013 – the silver of the full moon sifting through the
carbon-dioxide emitting leaves and making the crescent on my forehead shine in
its full glory.
I started small. Five rounds of
the park every day for a week. Seven thereafter. Ten. Twelve. Fifteen. And finally,
twenty – each round reminding me of the age when we were taught the numbers.
Every single year, at the annual
school picnic at Lodhi Garden – there were a few things that would never change
–
A guy from the class walking into
one of the tombs and coming back to tell the rest that he either saw a ghost of
the Mumtaz of the Lodhi who is still haunting the tomb, or better still, that
he is possessed by the Mumtaz of the Lodhi, who will pounce at your Blue Lay’s
because her death was caused by starvation from lack of Magic Masala.
Second, ten-year olds pelting
stones at a man resting his head in the lap of a species from the feminine
gender, who wore a dupatta-cum-burqah and exercised her abdominal
muscles like biting off the crotch of her salwar – while the boys shouted
“Romeo-Juliet” in unison with each pelted stone.
Third, the protagonist of this
story coming back home with a fever that wouldn’t go for days four hundred
ninety-six.
The same routine sans the spirit
and the stones repeated itself when the hero would take annual trips to the
Delhi World Book Fair and walk all day on two sticks that never worked more
than doing a nocturnal spinaroonie on the bed while sleeping with Dadi Ma and kicking the gut out of her
liquid-diet digesting stomach.
My body would catch a fever every
time that it was exerted beyond normal. It never did during the annual running
season because it would always be on slow counts of five, seven, ten, twelve,
fifteen and twenty – spread over two months.
Circa 2017.
The over-enthusiastic, self-delusional
bitch now decided to take up running again in the new park behind his new
residence in Gurugram three days ago on account of a three-day-holiday,
long-weekend, no-GST-calls, thank-god, whatever you may call it.
And ran twenty frickin’ rounds
for two days straight, thinking haha, I’m a runner, bitch. I listen to Tamma
Tamma on loop and kick the shit out of Gurugram’s morning runners, owning their
patooties like no one’s ever pwned them before.
The last two days have gone
rolling on my bed, trying to convince my family that I’m dying; taking medical
advice from a second-year student of medicine who said exertion can never cause
fever because it’s common sense that it doesn’t, and then looking up an article
on Livestrong<dot>com to prove him wrong, while coming to terms with the
fact that telling family about eminent death was actually not a joke, but is a
reality.
Two back-handed slaps to that
sadist bitch of a fever, who is keeping the temperature -running-, almost
reminding me of what I cannot do for the next three days, or the remaining of
my life, whatever comes earlier, ceteris paribus.
They say your whole life -runs-
before your eyes before you die. Sadistic little piece of shit.
Anyway, at least the fever got
this blog -running- again.
Goddammit!
***
Image Source: nottheworstcomic.com
