Down Memory Lane

“Dileep, it’s like this only as you get old” consoled my mother. “Ma, is 25 an age to say old?” I quizzed and erupted “It must be an injury I am carrying from last week’s run. I am healthy like a horse!”

Sitting at my desk, on a mundane Thursday afternoon I am reflecting on what my mother said. 25 years has been a pleasant journey. I guess I am at a point where I am officially allowed to quip “Those were the good old days.”

But when really did these “good old days” begin?

My first recollection of life is: me wearing a blue Tees and shorts (from which my thighs were bulging out to get a breath of fresh air); standing in front of a lady who was asking me what my name was repeatedly and I was standing blank as a white board as if I had seen a ghost. I vividly remember her sitting on a wooden stool and asking me one last time “Deepu, what is your name?” I was being interviewed to be admitted to my alma mater. Don’t know how I managed to clear the interview without opening my mouth, but I did.

Or hey! Was it when I was running behind my pet dog in the garden and it for no rhyme nor reason turned around started chasing me. I conceded defeat real soon, when she plunged, nailed me on the lawn and licked me while I endlessly giggled. That evening Jimmy and I smelt the same. I don’t remember the horror in my mother’s eyes when she saw me but I bet that would have been a sight to treasure.

Wait! Or was it when my mum took me to the Puja room and urged biting her teeth “Dileep, don’t lie. You are no longer a child. You are a big boy and are 5 years old now. God keeps track of everything you do and writes in a book all the wrong deeds you did after you became Five.” That is the first time I think I was scared, but I am sure I must have lied that the chalks were broken before I took them.

Whichever was the first incident, it doesn’t really matter I guess. But boy! Those were the good old days.

Howz this for an answer?

Like most, I discovered running quite by accident. Like most runners, I too am not designed for running.

My very first long distance run, in Jan 2005, I experienced for the first time a mind free-of-thought (maybe like the ones mentioned as in the culmination of meditation), what may be called as the runners high. Adding kilometer to kilometer I finally trained and finished a marathon. Many people ask me what have I achieved from this self-inflicted pain other than a certificate and a medal. This is my answer to them (with definite help from Tim Noakes):

1. From wanting to be surrounded by people, I have begun to love solitude and privacy. Even when running with fellow runners there comes a time when fatigue drives us back into ourselves. It’s only in those secluded times that we discover what we are made of.


2. Running has made me aware of my body and of my responsibility to take care of it. Having physically improved, it has also improved self-pride and not to forget self-discipline.


3. Having completed this severe running challenge it has given me the confidence that within my own limits; I could achieve whatever physical or academic target I set myself, only as long as I am prepared to make the necessary effort. I have learnt that rewards in running, as in life, come only in direct proportion to the amount of effort I am willing to exert, and the extent to which I can summon the required discipline.


4. Also, running has taught me a heightened degree of self-criticism and self-expectation. I realize that it is never possible to reach one’s absolute best, to reach the pinnacle of absolute perfection. Beyond each academic or sporting peak there will always, must always, be another peak waiting to be tackled.


5. It is while running that I have learnt to live with every day hassles. I have learnt to use running for relaxation and creativity.


6. Working on everything is essential, be it running or relationships. As Arthur Newton felt “You must never stay put at any stage; either you advance or slip back”


7. Running has taught me the humility to realize my limitations and to accept them with pride, without envy of those who might have physical or intellectual gifts that I lack.


8. To achieve any real success, academic or physical, there must be a fear of failure: a very real fear that the day will come when we will fail, regardless of how much we have prepared. It is this very insecurity that keeps our self-confidence from becoming arrogant.


9. It has taught me honesty. There is no luck. Results cannot be faked, there is no one but yourself to blame when things go wrong.


10. I have learnt that Life, like running, has to be lived as a competition with oneself. Like Peter Pollock once said: “You have not lived until you have fought a battle that is not against an opponent, but against yourself.”

Being a teetotaler many friends ridicule me; every man should have an addiction and ask what my addiction is? Now I say, “Yes, I am an addict too. Addicted to running”.