.Running in Circles

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Breecher Stove


A part of me died with the book.
I was twelve then.
I used to coach in the summer for handball.
I played under 16 girls, as the goalie.
I think I was fit to go to the Nationals.
I was even a year back.
To enter nationals under 15 to sprint.
I trained from seven to twelve, in the summers and on alternate days, I was at Priyadarshini Park training from five to eight.
Muscles that throbbed when they flexed.
Perfect hamstrings curved under the knee.

I wasn't allowed to dance, no marching in the school squad.
Because I was to be stiff to run.
Run from the start into the evening chill.
Bombay was much cooler then.
The sea at Napean Sea Road.
People came there holding hands, some with their children.
A few of my friends with parents.

I watched the yellow wagtail migrate in their group, flying in the light blue evening sky.
They looked like a constellation does, pitted against a pitch black sky.
And then I bent to touch my toes, stretching before I took a start and flexing each leg on the line, I arched my back in continuous flow and then concentrated my weight on my toes, lifting my hips a little off the air above my raised knees, like a prowling leopard sprinting to catch a fiercely horned gazelle.

I usually got the inner bend.I loved the curves.
They were the best to win the race with no competitor lurking behind the shadow of me, a few meters away from my back.
The outest circle was where the synthetic smoothed into a thin flat patch of cement railed by metal and it then merged in to the grass, almost always freshly watered.
And in a few seconds changed into a sandy blur of sand in the sand box where we usually took our marks on a thinner synthetic track for long jump.

Yes, I ran in circles.
It was a five hundred meter circle.
Warm ups, bounding, from long synthetic tracks to short cotton shorts that covered my throbbing thighs.
Grass spikes, track spikes.
Grass spikes were for friday's, the most tiring and most fun day of tearing muscle over muscle for eons.
It was when we bargained 2 kilometers of running into oblivion for an hour of intense power training and then a long game of handball.
I played goalie even then.The days Ghosh didn't come.
With Ghosh, he was nineteen, training to get into an engineering college, I think he said calcutta or so I assume cause he's Ghosh.
The other times I scored giving a slip to the opposing defense.
I was good at shooting cause I was good at blocking.
The boys usually had their tees off by half time , and we all played as it rained.
With Savio Sir, our coach, helping the girl's win.
He said we were better, much more skilled.
He had two children, Gasper and a little Girl.They came over on fridays to go out with him as we all left slowly after eight thirty.
I was traveling with two of my other friends at the age of twelve alone all the way by bus.It was a big thing for us all.
Mostly accompanied by a friend's servant, or mother.But we were to confident to acknowledge that.
We got off and then I'd walk them home taking a longer cut so I could watch the light's at Marine Drive or maybe watch all those college kid's smoke in the lanes inside that were the quickest short cuts home.
I usually took the longer.
Walking on the yellow dividers on the road that I imagined to be an island which looked prettiest in the latest of evening as the traffic lights went quickly by, blurring my vision because of its speed and then the heady feeling of seeing darkness and light.
This was a normal day.
On school days practise was on alternate days.
In winters in was more rigorous and less playing. No more, handball sessions.
Just warm ups and aerobics.
Then sprints.
We ran in circles even then, in rain, in winter, under the setting summer sun.
Being asthmatic and wheezing cause of strenuous work outs were suddenly jumbled.
But the faith that came with Running in Circles, was a pleasure.

As a flight of yellow wagtails colored the blue sky, this winter was different.
High fevers and continual breathing problems kept me from participating in the Nationals.
I barely scraped through district that year.
Just two silvers.

But there were others who won the gold.
Other friends.

After that I just attended summer training at MMRDA and a free diluted Rasna before we left.
We paid fifty bucks for all of summer which was almost the amount we paid to get there on more relaxed days.
I played goalie on the first day try outs and picked handball and my friends played basket ball.
The rest is history that could have been.
Or I would like to think.

My habit of picking words.
Or phrases to describe phases still stays with me.
The first poem I wrote was in fourth grade.

PS: This series is dedicated to myself.
In celebration of coming of age, soon.
In a few days, a few days after the ides of march.