Born to Run, Story 1: Why I Took Up Running

It's another tepid sunset, slowly staring across the sky...I was just a hired hand...

They arrive in droves every Monday morning. Lugging laptops and chargers and other gadgets on their backs, oversized lunchbox kits dangling from their limp hands, they drive or ride or trundle or waddle into the numerous IT parks that flank the dusty, traffic-clogged roads, where once orchards and farms adorned the landscape. For the next forty to eighty hours in the week, they’ll hammer away at their laptop keyboards, charge their gadgets and numb their senses with caffeine, paste their headphones to their ears, and listening to endless prattle about things that just won’t progress or take form till the final hour, ostentatiously called “the deadline”.  

I’m one of those faces in that drove of corporate slaves. Day after day, year after year, I’ve been labouring on things that make no sense to me. I don’t learn anything new or exciting, I’ve absolutely no interest – let alone passion – in learning about the things on which I spew reams of drivel, and I don’t “see myself five years from now” in an exciting place; no I don’t, Mr. HR or PMP-certified manager who "gets it off" by staring into a spreadsheet! The organisations change, the managers and directors change too, the “platform” and “machines” and “applications” bear new names and faces, but the monotony remains the same.

This is not the truth about the Indian IT industry alone. I’m certain that there are “management professionals”, bankers, S&M folks, and other corporate workers who feel the same way. But having spent some time in this industry now, I speak for myself and my cringe-and-bear-it relationship with the IT industry. I don’t mean to be condescending in my diatribe about IT. Not long ago, I had the opportunity of working with a startup and witnessing some really brilliant minds at work! These guys were a bunch of ingenious coders who were passionate about the stuff they developed and were pretty good at it too! That was a good way to expend skill and show passion for something that they were extremely fond of. But for people like me who, somehow, like falling into a blackhole, got dragged into this industry, we’re stuck! In a really bad place.

Do I mean to say that there are IT professionals who feel the same way as I do? Of course! Look at the sullen faces in the crowds that arrive in the IT parks on a Monday morning. You’ll find latent artists, athletes, historians, adventurers, politicians, diplomats, and philosophers in them. All of them stuck in their corporate prison cells only – and I repeat, only – for the money that they earn. More than 85% of them, I can safely say, endure the atrocities of corporate life only for the 30^th and 31^st of the month, when the salary-credit SMS pops up on their mobile phones.

That is a highly transient moment of happiness. The smiles fade within an hour of receiving the salary, because at the same time, out goes the EMIs, the rents, the bills, and insurance premiums. The fatter the paycheck, the higher the outgoings, and also the higher number of ailments. Along with your other incentives (which you've got to look for in the payslip with a magnifying glass), you also earn hypertension, diabetes, spondylitis, migraine, PCOD, cirrhosis, slip disc (I’m not talking about CDs skidding in the disk drive!), bipolar disorder, arthritis, erectile dysfunction, and worse things. In other words, another slice of 'unwritten' standard deductions from your salary.

The disheartening truth about all this is that, after making amends with life and coping with the burdens of modern lifestyle, when things go south, the same organisation doesn't think twice before unceremoniously booting you out. Then, the very thought of paying all your bills and rents and EMIs without the guarantee of a salary at the end of the next month eats into your mind, sucks the life out of you. The nightmares and the panic attacks then drive you to the next available avenue: another similar slave-driver that will, at first, make promises of fishing you out of your misery at whatever wage THEY decide is good for you in those circumstances (anyway, when did you ever get what you wanted in the first place!). And then, the same story begins once again. Software development lifecycle, do I hear you say?

W.H. Davies saw it coming long ago in 1911. In the end, what is it all worth, he asked. "What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare." I’ve an eleven year old who will soon run her first rat race, the SSC examinations. I’ve spent my life doing stuff I’ve absolutely no love for, but I definitely don’t want her to end up doing the same thing: chase money, chase fat paychecks and compromise on things that she is passionate about. I hope at least she gets to do what she wants in life. I’m not going to be a burden on her by piling on her and making myself a liability when I grow old, if I live that long like my maternal grandparents. 

And that is why I took up running.

Just when I was looking to do something to keep myself hale and hearty, and did not burn a hole in my pocket, I discovered running. I came across Murakami's title "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" on Google for the first time, when I was sitting in my temporary cubicle that overlooked the atrium of the World Bank Headquarters in Washington DC. An excerpt was posted on one of the pages in the Search results, and for the first time, I began to mull over the prospects of taking up running. Then, I was an obese man in his early thirties, suffering from high cholesterol and blood pressure, who drank copious amounts of alcohol almost every evening and binged on fried foods. Short walks used to leave me breathless, and I carried an Asthalin inhaler everytime in my bag; used it often too. 

I'll write about my first disastrous running experience in a separate post. For now, seven years later, I can tell you that the ‘runner’s high’ that I experience after each run, long or short, is a good antidote for the depression pangs that assail my mind beginning Sunday evening. It keeps me feeling alive; it keeps “lifestyle diseases” at bay. Running is gradually ridding my system of the hypertension that I earned at the Bank along with a tax-free salary, and it makes me feel younger than I was when I was in my twenties. I know I’ve digressed outrageously in this post because I meant to talk about how I made running an integral part of my life, but ended up talking about the banes of our times. In another post, I’ll talk more pointedly about running, I promise. No more spiteful digressions.