Sept 8th: Dream a little dream with me

"As with all our obsessions, our dreams come back too."

There are times when I think and there are times when I don't, this is one of those times. So here I am, at the autumn of my middle ages, staring at my tarot leaves strewn across the ground and with spring I hope will come a soothing gentle breeze. Anticipation overcomes anxiety as I close my eyes to throw light on the synapses that I grasp to move into another dimension. I feel the breeze, its stronger, more like a wind... a strong north wind, says my trusted inbuilt compass that I have been relying on for so many years. Its night and so I can no longer solicit the sun for directions, neither the north star as my view is hazy. But instinctively I look northward... which is errr... UP... and I open my eyes to a realisation that the wind is stronger, and its in my face. Damn the fan is on!!! I continue to stare at that instrument that has falsified my hope, hope that is the only antidote to fear. Its either me or it, I'll stare until it withers away. . But as the standoff continues with the instrument that is dutifully doing its intended lifelong function, I begin to notice its blades cut through space, as time seems to slow down. Its hypnotic buzz and perpetual anticlockwise motion seems to be taking me back to the future.

I'm 21 again, a time when I believe I can take on the world. Its my final year of college and I'm on stage conducting an intercollegiate personality contest. Atul, AJ and myself have scrutinized the contestants forms and have thought of questions to their anticipated answers, just as they have thought of answers to our anticipated queries, to impress the audience. We asked them about how life had been to them and how they had been to life. Some spoke about their dreams, their ambitions, their noble intentions to change the world. Some of them were more candid while others were witty. Most were just confused. I felt suffocated again as I made an effort to breathe. Just a few hours before that I was in a hospital gasping for breath. My chest was congested and a constant wheezing sound accompanied my every breath. I was finding it so hard to breathe that the doctor had to give me an injection.

My sister Sonali suffered from asthmatic attacks till her early twenties and I gave her company sometimes as we went through some sleepless winter nights with pillows and hot water bottles tucked under our chests so that we could breathe. On really bad days I would check that she was breathing before I closed my eyes and I would do the same as soon as I woke up. During one such coup de main, when I was sick at home I watched this movie called 'Without Limits'. A true story about a long distance runner called Steve Prefontaine. Steve once said,"A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways they’re capable of understanding". What struck me most about him was that he set the pace in every race he ran. He wanted to lead from the start. He won races with a lot of guts, once even with a bloody split foot. He would always give it his all. His coach, who went on to found Nike, tried to get him to change his strategy but it took him a big loss at the 1972 olympics to rethink his strategy, where he led from the beginning, before being overtaken by 3 others just before the finish line.

If I was to ask myself in a personality contest, with no audience and no judges, what I wanted to do later on, one of them would be to run a marathon. Not cause it would make good cocktail conversation or look good on a blog. I just wanted to run, not just cross the finish line with the crowd cheering me on, but run all 42.195 kms of it, and feel what it takes to run that long. I was having trouble breathing then, but I knew that it would pass. Even at football I would run out of breath after a short dash but I still played for my school and district. I wanted to run, and know what works for me to run long. I wanted to make mistakes in strategy, understand my weaknesses and then learn from it. I wanted to run, even if I bled. Yeah I was that crazy. I wanted to set my own pace however slow or however fast. I just wanted to compete with myself. All those thoughts were subject to the metamorphosis and evanescence of a few fractions of a second, my wonder years. But then I woke up from my hypnotic haze and realised that my dreams were now mediocre....

When I heard about the Bangalore marathon last year it touched quite a few chords and I heard a bit of music again as I completed the half marathon (21kms). The 2nd Bangalore Marathon is on Sept 17th. I'm not sure if I'll complete the full one (42kms) but the least I could do is try. I'll take atleast more than twice the time as the front runner, if I complete that is, but I'm not competiting with them.

I guess as with all our obsessions,
like looking for the north wind,
the north star and staring at ceiling fans,
our dreams come back too.

Sept 9th: Reality Bites