Running Back To Life

I walked gingerly always, to stop reminding me of my niggling knee injury. I had not been running for some time now, though at the time of not running for some time, it had seemed a long time. Too long to bear.  Worse, it had seemed, on particularly hopeless days, that I might never be able to run again.  I kept looking on with longing and ache at runners who passed me by. What I wouldn't give to be in his or her shoes. Those confident, long strides, pounding the ground beneath; strength oozing from every thud, with boundless promises of life and exploration. I was to miss it all. Impatiently, I was condemned to wait, through persevering sighs and bottomless lows. If you’re not a runner, you won’t get it.

Yet, in the beginning of the injury, it had seemed benign. My right knee, I found one day was swollen. I bought an ointment that evening called Volini. No time to lose, I foolishly thought to myself. Next morning I woke up, and while still in bed, checked if the knee was still paining. It was. I developed a new empathy for all those runners, who had fretted about injuries, and whose fretting I had found excessive, even attention-seeking. The god of injury was fickle and irascible and had to be propitiated at all costs.

And I gulped; parched, bitter gulps. Bitterness directed at no one in particular and everyone in general. No news was good enough and every bad piece of news was – I thought cynically – expected. The client was thankless, the cook was useless, friends were selfish, goodness overrated, vileness underreported and people were parasitical. I became what I thought others were: contemptible and mean. But somewhere within me I didn’t want to believe in the meanness, for believing in it would mean resigning to a future with no running. It was the kind of future that seemed inconceivable to me ever since I had first started running. I wanted to run again and blow my cynicism into smithereens. And yet, while doing lunges (just checking moments) with the right knee, the shooting pain convinced me that the meanness gaining ground inside couldn’t be wished away easily.

It could be resisted, however and with good luck overcome, only if I was clinical in my approach. But I had done enough foolish stuff in between. I popped painkillers (morning: 1 and night: 1) advised by athletes from Kerala and ran. I felt no pain, and felt my legs less. I hoped that taking painkillers for a week will make the pain disappear, which it did. But it also made me drowsy and puffed up my face. I panicked and stopped taking painkillers.

I visited a physiotherapist, who tapped on my knee-cap twice, advised me to cut down on all forms of exercise and asked me to visit him after one week. I didn’t. I bought an exer-cycle, which made the pain worse.

It was, I think on the day of the Mumbai marathon, which was being beamed LIVE, that I became unusually restless and frustrated. So many runners in colourful attire; straining, waving and striving and running across the majestic Worli-Bandra sealink in warm breeze. Seeing them, something inside me snapped. It was 10 am in the morning and I stepped outside, barefoot. Running barefoot is the latest mantra in the US and the sole (pun unintended) cure of all injury related woes. I decided to give it a try, which was a bad idea on Indian roads. After 3 kms I came back limping, less due to the knee injury and more because of the slashes and the cuts and the bruises, inflicted on the soles of my feet, by my one stubbornly foolish decision. I laughed at myself that I wanted it so badly.

I can’t completely recall what time it was when things began to change, but things began to fall into place. The pain was less and less and then sometimes more. I became careful but not careworn, as I had inclined to become in the early days of the injury. I would like to believe I became patient dealing with it, something that satisfied me.

I bought new shoes and started to run slowly. Almost an amble, twice a week. I stopped if I felt any pain and now I was more understanding.

And this Sunday I ran 10 kms again. Don’t ask me how, it just happened, as inevitable as it had seemed, even when I was completely hopeless.

Though at the run, a forty-five-ish looking lady was particularly infuriating, as she overtook me time and again.