It was 0700 IST on Sunday, 01/15/2006. It was an idyllic early morning setting in Powai. For a brief second, you tend to forget that you are in the hustle and bustle of Mumbai. Powai can do that to you once in a while, especially if you are in Hiranandani and with a view as scintillating as that at Winchester. We had assembled at the unearthly god forsaken hour to proceed towards South Mumbai for the Dream Run - the Mumbai Marathon! After admiring the settings, I, for a brief period, thought of getting up early morning everyday to enjoy the makings of nature. But on second thoughts, I decided that it was too much of an effort for the same. And I wasnt ready to do that! The office guys had provided us with some cool jogging apparel. There was a smart green tee along with a sexy pair of white tracks for the run! A head-band and a wrist-band made up as accessories. All in all it was a wonderful effort at their end.
We reached Azad Maidan at CST without any problems. Before the run began, there were a few games held for the people who participated as a part of the corporate challenge. One such game called 'The tail', yours truly (in his fine primate traditions and in honour of his ancestors) came up with the longest tail made from a circular piece of paper! In a while, it was time for THE EVENT! We proceeded slowly towards the main entrance of CST which is where the Dream Run was flagged from. There were quite a few celebrities, notable amongst them being J. Srinath, Vinod Khanna and Suresh Kalmadi. We had divided our batch of 30 into 3 teams. .Joggers .Walkers .Crawlers I happened to be a part of the Joggers team. The idea was to start and the stop and drift to the Walkers and hope to not join the Crawlers. With a lot of enthusiasm and gusto, we started the run! It wasn't much of a race as there was no winner. In that sense, all those amongst us were winners as we were running for a cause. There were people from many other corporates such as Bank of America, Jet Airways, Birla Group, JW Marriot, TCS...each supporting a welfare cause of their choice. We were running for an NGO called as Magic Bus that works for the slum children in Mumbai. The idea in a run that stretches this long (well it was long for me!) is to conserve energy. So we (the 'we' is an effect of working in a team for long and learning the nuances of mail etiquette) decided to jog at a steady speed. Steady I was, but I guess it was a steadily decreasing one. Having be confined to a desk job with a crazy lifestyle(attibutable to my life and not the work), I was totally out of shape. The first few kilometers were fine. I could continue in a steady jog and things didn't seem to be that bad after all. I stocked myself with a few bottles of water. The small ones which fitted into the pockets. Somewhere close to Marine Drive, I lost steam. I decided to slow down and walk briskly instead. But as soon as I got to Marine Drive, the view rejuvenated me and I broke into a jog again. There after, it was a series of jogging spurts followed by brisk walks. There were a lot of people on the other side of the barricades who kept cheering us all and egging us on! Even the Mumbai Mamas (local lingo for the cops) had a pleasant smile on their face. The run wasn't without its share of hotties! A common sight in Mumbai, the run wasn't going to be otherwise I guess. One in Pink had particularly caught my attention. I guess it made the entire run all that more interesting! While on the topic, I must add that Riya Sen was running behind me! Guess that is something talking about... A good 40 minutes into the run, as we inched closer to the finish line, the enthusiasm seemed to return back into the muscles out of nowhere. I managed a sprint (a jog at that time could be termed as a sprint) to the finish line! While there was no ribbon, I raised my hands in glory! I had completed it! There were a lot of feelings in the mind at that time...ecstacy, glory, achievement, bubbling enthusiam...this was interrupted by the shrill of the muscles crying ou aloud. Pretty much akin to the time when you dad awakes you from deep slumber just before your dream reaches a climax! The stop watch read 48 minutes! Which meant that all of it was done in decent amount of time... Once done, we all assembled at Metro Cinema, where we had sugarcane juice! At that time, I wouldn't have traded the glass of cane juice for a whole bottle of Chivas Regal! It was heavenly! I had to spend a good 4 hours in downtown (and not go home) after all this as I was meeting up with a friend. Tried to eat a bit at MacDonalds and then caught a movie at Sterling in the middle of which I kept dozing off...Eventually, I reached home... Later at night, I learnt two important lessons in biology...there are 206 bones in the human body. And over 600 muscles! And I could identify each and every one of them without any trouble! Talk about an all around(also pound) experience! ALL the bones and muscles(everything for that matter) hurt! But the experience drowned this all (with able help from a Combiflam).
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