Last month I ran for the first time after 5th grade. And for the first time ever was I running not towards anything, from nothing, or to win something. For the first time, I was running for the act of it alone. The only thing I remembered of running was exhaustion, competition, losing, and a little bit of humiliation. I had conveniently escaped, in spite of persuasion, any form of running for the last 15 years.
And in a very ‘yeh dil na hota bechara, kadam na hote awara, jo khoobsurat koi apna humsafar hota’ way I started wanting to do life-bettering things since P and I made a home together. So last month, P and I set out at 11 pm, I to run, she to cycle. I ran. I did not but wanted to write about feeling my heartbeat in my temples, about breathing hard, and about blood in my cheeks. Of sweating in a good way. And how stretching feels like a good massage.
The day before, I went running again. And I ran extra hard, extra long. When I came back home, I rejoiced in humans’ capacity to grow into and out of things. To sit at the table from the times of board exams, where I talked to people I love in front of Integration notes to sitting at the same table and writing to people I love about re-raising ourselves, I have made a long happy journey. So today if you feel like, try to love an animal you were taught to be scared of, paint like you weren’t compared to your cousin, or sing like no one ever mimicked you to celebrate the malleability that is our superpower.