July 18, 2009
Mud-Splattered Nirvana
Our relationship with the rains is completely schizoid. While we want it to rain, so that there is enough water throughout the year, we get really stressed and irritated when it rains on our way to work or when we are traveling to keep an appointment, or basically at anytime during the workweek. And yet it was not always like this.
One of the simple pleasures we had, when we were kids, was playing football in the rains. My school has the largest playground in Mumbai and there was ample opportunity to play virtually any game before or after school hours.
During the rains, the football grounds would get so soggy and soft that each time our feet hit the brown mud, wet clumps would fly and stick to our shoes, socks, legs and eventually, shorts and shirt. By the time we were done with our play, we would be completely mud-soaked, some of us even sporting brown hair, especially if we had fallen down at any time. We would then proudly trudge home, wait outside the door, remove our socks, shoes and shirt and only then be allowed to cross the threshold while gingerly holding in one hand, our dirty shoes, which would promptly go into a bucket in the bathroom, where both the shoes and our bodies would get a good dunking. Most of us would have been ideal candidates for Surf Excel or Rin ads.
Once we were done with school, playing football in the mud pretty much stopped. And as we grew up and made our way through college and then started working, the rains went from being fun to being irritating, something to avoid rather than to revel in.
Until three days ago.
I was running in school, in the evening, in an attempt to stay fit. It had been raining a bit in the morning, but the skies were clear when I started. A few minutes into the run however, dark clouds suddenly gathered over the ground, and a few raindrops started falling.
I continued to run, as did many others.
And then the heavens opened up and the clouds burst and the rain pelted down fast and furious. Within no time I was completely drenched. My spectacle lenses were swimming in large pools of water and I could barely see a couple of feet ahead. Luckily I know my running route inside out and so I focused on my stride, trying to make sure that I wouldn't fall, especially over the thin film of slippery water that often covers concrete surfaces.
Part of my route is along the edge of the football grounds. The moment I stepped on the mud, my shoes went splutch and squelch, splutch and squelch, with mud flying in all directions, cloaking my Nike Airs, splattering my socks and sticking to the back of my legs. I am now much taller than I was as a school-kid and luckily the rest of my upper body was spared.
Soon though, the shoes became wet and heavy and I could feel my socks turn pulpy. My T-shirt seemed to have gained a couple of kilos and was sticking to my ungainly chest. My hair was a fountainhead. The rain refused to relent and after a while, it just became too difficult to fight the pouring sheets of water and the accompanying wind and I finally stopped.
I walked home in the rain, on top of the world, without an umbrella or raincoat, devoid of any care in those brief moments.
Bliss!
Posted by bhavinj at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2009
Track and Be Tracked
For the last few years, I have always felt envious of my friends and family abroad, whenever they have driven me around in their cars from one place to another. Virtually all their cars are equipped with GPS tracking devices, which use detailed road maps to help them get from one place to another, without the need to refer to map books. These GPS (Global Positioning System) devices are palm-sized, use the power of multiple satellites orbiting the Earth's atmosphere and come with detailed maps so that once the destination address is entered, the device automatically calculates the most appropriate route and then guides the driver along the roads with audio-based instructions.
I may be mistaken, but I have not as yet seen GPS devices in India that work with the same precision as those in the US or UK. This seems to be less a hardware issue and more a software problem, probably related to the poor availability of detailed maps with updated road-names, considering our penchant for changing the names of our roads and cities ever so often.
But as with all things these days, there are workarounds, which I have been able to find using my Nokia E71, which is incidentally a great choice for those who want a full-fledged QWERTY keyboard for typing and find the on-screen keyboard on the IPhone a pain, and also hate the constant email beep-beep of a Blackberry.
If you install Google Maps on the E71 and then use both GPRS and GPS, you can clearly see your current, actual location with a high degree of accuracy. I have used this method to successfully navigate a route from Powai to Madh Island at midnight, as well as to make sure that my cabdrivers in non-familiar cities in India don't take me for a ride (pun intended).
GPS technology though can do more than give driving instructions, allowing other forms of tracking as well. For example, if you are an anally obsessed parent with control issues, you could potentially track the exact location of your son/daughter by either putting a GPS chip in his/her car or in a very dark Orwellian manner, surreptitiously implanting the chip in some part of his/her body.
But what really blew me away, early this week, was the way I was able to use GPS technology to track my running. On Tuesday, I stumbled upon a program called Nokia Sports Tracker (NST) and its companion website. NST works on a large number of Nokia models and I was able to successfully install it on the E71.
When you start NST, using GPS, it first pinpoints your exact position. Then when you start running, walking or cycling, it accurately tracks your movement, and on your cell-phone, shows you the distance that you are covering, the speed with which you are running or walking, the altitude, the time per km or mile and the total calories burnt. And all this information is real-time.
As if this is not enough, it actually traces the route that you have taken and superimposes this on a low-resolution map on the cell-phone. Then, once the run is complete, you can send the entire workout record to the program's server, which superimposes the tracked route on a high-resolution Google map, which you can then view along with the rest of your track record, on the companion website.
The best part? Actually what I've described is the best part...NST also comes with a "free" tag.
How absolutely cool is that!
Posted by bhavinj at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)
December 27, 2008
What I Write About, When I Write About Running (with due respect to Mr. Murakami)
I once wrote about the shortage of running spaces in Mumbai and Matunga. This piece is about the “running” itself. I am not an expert runner, and have never participated in or won a race (unless you count primary school 100m races), but I do run regularly. And in a rare moment of star-like alignment, a bunch of things have come together.
I first started seriously running in the winter of 2002. Since then, I’ve been running irregularly regularly for the last six years, though I’ve never been able to bring myself to run a race. This year, after having successfully managed an “athai”, I decided to try the other extreme and registered for the half-marathon to be held on 18th January.
Yet, till the last week of November, I still wasn’t sure whether I would actually run the race. I normally run around 3 to 3.2 km in 30 minutes and anything more than this causes real pain. And so, I kept procrastinating; avoiding even thinking about the training for the 21 km race.
Then two things happened. I read Haruki Murakami’s “What I talk about, when I talk about running”. Three days later, the terror attacks happened.
Mr. Murakami is a Japanese fiction writer, whose work has been extensively translated into English and who I count as one of the top 10 authors of all time. His “running” book is autobiographical; Mr. Murakami started running when he started writing, in an attempt to exercise and has over the last 22 years run quite a bit, marathons included. I have millions of typed words to go before coming anywhere close to Mr. Murakami in writing prowess, but still; the writer-runner combination made me seriously think of starting the training for the half-marathon.
And now over the last month, I have been able to run longer and faster than ever before. Mr. Murakami got me started. The angst and anger are now the fuel.
Outwardly, we may also seem to have bounced back, but inside we are all still seething. People have been channelizing this angst in different ways; one friend is becoming an activist, another has gone into a Laphroaig haze and I've upped my running. Ms. Gina Kolata of the New York Times some time back wrote an apocryphal article on how Buddhist monks can run 300 kms by just chanting and meditating. I've started focusing on the anger; on the terrorists, on the events, on the enemy. This helps pump up the adrenaline and endorphins and over the last month, I've gone from running 3.2 kms in half an hour to 7.7 kms in one hour. I rest every other day to let the muscles recover, but then I am back on the ground again, pounding the mud relentlessly, arms swinging, focusing my thoughts into one singularity. It hurts badly at night; but as the old cliché goes, "no pain, no gain". All this may be coincidence, but it has helped. Hopefully I’ll be able to complete the half-marathon in under 3 hours. Hopefully; I run on mud, whereas the half-marathon is on concrete; I run at dusk, whereas the sun will be up by the time we are halfway through our race. And even if it takes more than 3 hours, one thing is sure; I am definitely going to complete the race.
And maybe, like me, the whole city should run. Run to show solidarity; to show the rest of the country and the world that we are capable of rising above all this together; that we are able to resist and overcome as we have done in the last two decades, all attempts to tear apart the fabric of our city. And those who can’t run, should come and cheer on the sidelines. Whichever way; on 18th January, the whole city should be out on the streets. That will be our statement to the world!
Posted by bhavinj at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)
