“I hope I have not disturbed you in the middle of something that you deem to be more important than attending to the phone call of your retired, tired and a bit retarded uncle,” Jigneshbhai and I heard a voice on Swami’s phone when he put it on the speaker as his phone rang while sipping his coffee.
A faint smile made its presence felt on our lips. The UK-educated English teacher and now retired maternal uncle of Swami was a familiar voice.
“No, Mama, I am just having coffee with Jigneshbhai,” Swami said. “I always have time for you,” he added.
“Well, that is a sign that the trappings of success haven’t touched the humility of my dear nephew,” Shridhar Mama said, before taking a pause to take a breath.
“How are you and why did you call?” Swami brought Shridhar Mama straight to the point.
“Well, the reason I called is to invite you and your friends for a “Fun Run” at Prakruti next Sunday,” Shridhar Mama was surprisingly succinct.
The prospect of participating in a Fun Run wasn’t particularly exciting to Jigneshbhai and me. But Swami didn’t ask us.
“Yes, Mama, we will be there,” he confirmed.
“Wonderful. Your august presence will grace the occasion for certain. I look forward to seeing you there,” Shridhar Mama gave a quick vote of thanks and disconnected.
Jigneshbhai and I gave Swami a frown.
“Fun Run at Prakruti, eh?” Jigneshbhai asked.
Swami giggled. The discomfort was evident. But what was done was done.
With shoes and track suits, we got set for the Fun Run at Shridhar Mama’s farmhouse Prakruti the following Sunday. The chief guest was Swami’s personal gym trainer, Sam. “Varun’s martial teacher is a good friend,” Sam explained when Swami’s face expressed surprise at seeing him there. “Good to see you Swami Sir here. It will be a Fun Run,” he said.
Swami smiled at Sam from a distance. “This is too uncomfortable now,” he muttered later. “We have no escape.”
Sam started the warmup exercises for everyone. Jigneshbhai and I too felt the heat. We pretended as if we had trained well for the event, jogging on the spot.
“This was a bad idea,” Jigneshbhai gasped at Swami.
As the whistle went off, we found that our steps just didn’t take off. We trudged along a bit but found that the slope of the track wasn’t amenable to our kind of running.
“This is really uncomfortable,” Swami moaned. He waved at Shridhar Mama as he gave us a thumbs up from his seat along with an enthusiastic Raji Periamma goading everyone.
“Sometimes I wish we were senior citizens like them,” Jigneshbhai said with sweat on his brow. Our wise friend’s area of expertise was largely in the mental and, sometimes, spiritual domain. Physical efforts brought out, let me just say, the Swami in him. He went into an uncharacteristic phase of discomfort.
“Come on everyone,” Sam cheered. “It is just 5 km, only seven rounds around the farmhouse,” he howled in what he thought was a voice of encouragement. Little did he know that it set off alarms of panic in Jigneshbhai and Swami.
“Seven rounds, did he say?” Jigneshbhai asked in consternation.
Swami and I looked at each other, enjoying the rare, tense face of our wise friend.
“Every long journey starts with a small step,” Swami said with a smile, sounding like Jigneshbhai himself for a change. “It is a matter of time,” he added.
But the reality was that our muscles felt weak. Breathing was forced and heavy over the rising slope. Our minds were protesting and threatening to stop our bodies in rebellion. “This is not the way you want to spend your Sunday,” we heard it say within. “This is hard,” it repeated in unison after every goading.
“Seriously. This is unbearable,” Jigneshbhai’s otherwise strong mind shouted as the track incline increased at the next turn.
Swami and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything. We just continued jogging along. Like our coffee conversations, there was a long period of silence for a few minutes.
We persisted. It was somewhere after around fifteen minutes that Jigneshbhai raised his head and looked at Swami and me.
Everything seemed to have changed in that period of silence.
The frown had given way to a smile. There was heavier panting, for sure. The sweat had covered the face now. But the legs were moving and grooving better. The blood was pumping in our system. I could feel that the breath was alive and steady.
“We have covered two rounds already,” Swami declared.
“It isn’t as bad as it was when we started,” Jigneshbhai said.
My mind had also opened up to this moment and was giving me positive vibes. We found peace in the natural surroundings of Prakruti. From the unbearable start, we had progressed to a somewhat less uncomfortable middle.
But what was in store was completely unexpected.
As we kept prodding for a few more minutes, we started seeing the beautiful farmhouse, the fruits and vegetable trees and the lush vegetation that Shridhar Mama had painstakingly developed. “That seems to be Papaya,” Swami said, while Jigneshbhai observed the cauliflower beds. We caught our breaths between our chats and soon realised that we had reached the last bend on the penultimate round.
“Buck up everyone,” Sam announced as we crossed him standing at the turn of the lap. “It is just a matter of a few more minutes. Last two rounds begin now,” he declared.
As we came close to completing the last lap with the finish line in sight, Jigneshbhai seemed like enjoying it. Swami’s smile felt like a million bucks. I wondered what we would have missed if we had listened to our inner protestor when we started this Fun Run. We would have missed a great feeling of finishing something that seemed (and was) unbearable some time back.
Shridhar Mama stood at the finish line welcoming all the participants. “I wish I were a couple of decades younger. My heart pined to participate but my body doesn’t allow it,” he congratulated us as we partook the fresh fruit juice waiting for us. Little did he know what Jigneshbhai had secretly wished for.
But the English teacher wasn’t done yet.
“I must say that your participation made this occasion special,” he started. “With a profound sense of gratitude, this tired, retired and somewhat retarded Shridhar Mama thanks you,” he added. Then, he looked at us and with a mischievous smile, he said, “My experienced eyes and heart could see that your Fun Run was, like all difficult things, unbearable to start with and uncomfortable in the middle.”
He then took a pause and added, “But like every tough thing worth doing, I could see that you were unstoppable at the end.” Shridhar Mama broke out into a loud guffaw that reverberated through the crowd at Prakruti.
Another wealthy, old man, but a loud, loquacious one for a change, had left me, Swami and Jigneshbhai too this time with a few points to ponder.
***