A Sunday morning jog

After a very very long time, I decided to do a night out (college lingo for owl like behaviour -> not sleeping at night). There were two reasons, one was that I had woken up at 2 in the afternoon and then again (somehow) dozed off for another couple of hours in the evening. The second one was reliving an experience that I had had months ago in IITG. Well I have had many a night outs at IIT, but all of them were with friends, which included watching a film (or two), then going for a walk around the campus, fried maggi at the canteen and then a discussion till dawn about almost anything under the sun. All but one.

This one was different because I sat through the night alone, reading a book, watching a film, reading Ghalib's ghazals, and then going for a cross campus jog at the crack of dawn. It was an unspeakable refreshing experience. And I had not slept the whole day after that as well.

So, I decided to repeat this experience. I started off by watching a film - Ankur - by Shyam Benegal. I have recently seen two of his films, Welcome to Sajjanpur and Shatranj ke Khiladi and have liked them both immensly. Ankur was disappointing though, except for the last 10 minutes. Anyways, by 5 in the morning I had started feeling drowsy and to wake myself up I shaved my beard. It was quite eery, shaving in the dark, the first time I have ever done so.

I took off sometime after six. The cool morning breeze instantly recalled that morning when I had been running alone in IIT. Smoke from a garbage fire, suddenly brought me back to reality. And then a blast of horn from a school bus. Then the reek from an overfilled garbage dump assaulted my nostrils.

The IIT roads used to be completely empty, with the exception of a zealous professor and his wife or a labourer with a lota in his hand.

The roads of Hyderabad, though not as full as they would be later in the day, were still congested enough to shock a new early morning jogger. After sometime the main road passed through the market place. Looking at the scene you couldn't say that it was just after 6 in the morning. Fully dressed people, waiting at the bus stop, haggling with shared auto drivers, buying fish and mutton, cursing a scooter waala wala for driving rashly - and on a Sunday on top of that. Just imagine what it would be like on a weekday.

I trudged along, huffing and puffing, struggling to maintain my momentum, in the face of so much noise and even pollution, early in the morning. On top of that a steep ascent would stare me in the face every 100 meters or so. On one such incline, I found it extremely difficult to keep running, then saw an auto spluttering up the slope, this inspired me and I ran faster, only to realise later that the auto contained no less than 8 full grown ups.

On the way I passed a group of labourers, for whom Sunday didn't mean a thing - it was just another day. And they looked at me strangely, wondering why someone would waste so much energy so early in the day. Maybe his house is on fire, no his ass more like.

Then I reached the KVR park, which is a sort of famous jogging and strolling destination, and an amazing scene greeted me. A huge queue of luxury cars streteched for over a kilometer on both sides of the road. I hoped that I would never have so much money and so little time, that I would have to come in a car to jog.

Further on I encountered a boy, aged somewhere between 15 and 20, sitting on a bike and smoking. Why would someone smoke so early in the morning? And that too in the middle of the road on a bike. Strange!!

With great difficulty I finished the last incline on the route, it was now downhill all the way back to where I live. Seeing that I had been successful in defeating the terrain, the Sun came out in full force to stop me from completing this 5 km close circuit track. It needn't have bothered, for the exhaust fumes of the buses were enough to finally make me stop somewhere close to 4 km.

I felt defeated, depleted and the opposite of all those things that I had felt after the jog in Guwahati, which incidentally I had completed. Well, one thing was common though - this is going to be a one off thing as well.