Monday, October 19, 2009

About losing weight and the choices we have and make

Wrote this on Diwali, 17th Oct.

Diwali today, should have been a usual morning, except that at 6:30 my mom woke me up to reverse the car for getting it washed. And I thought it would make sense to go running, a choice made initially difficult but finally easier because of the not so recent gain in weight. I stepped out and started walking towards the ground. Saw a few children, the oldest being 10 and the rest of them 6-7 years old, getting ready to play football. Started my jog around the 300-350m perimeter park and after about the first 800 meters a known feeling came back; where the body gets slightly warmed, the breadth a little heavier and body wants to say, let me be, let me rest a bit. A feeling that I have always overcome. Football was just getting started, the goal was international size, field covered almost half the ground. They were 6 in all, three girls, three guys. The older guy and a girl were in one team. I kept running, thinking that around 3kms (10 rounds with the last half a sprint) would be a good first day distance to cover. Still 3-4 rounds to go, slightly tired but given the lower temperature, no sweat. I noticed the older guy was wearing Adidas spikes and relied on outrunning the others (which was quite easy) and shooting hard into the wide goal. One of the two younger chaps was putting up some fight. Everyone else kept hitting the ball with their toes and mistiming; sending it packing off into the wrong direction. Couple of times I passed the ball back. I was into my last round and was looking forward to the sudden feeling of tiredness that would come after the sprint.

It was over. Doing it after a few months had made worsened the tiredness but made it all the more sweet. I still kept walking, bent over a little with my arms swaying in front of my legs, my eyes on the football playing guys. The younger fighter chap was making a sprint kicking the ball along, the older guy picked up speed, came from behind and started pushing. Couple of shoves and the younger chap rolled hard, the older chap seeing this did an automatic fall, wincing his face, catching hold of his leg and simultaneously shrieking ‘your foul’. The younger chap was crying and the rest of the team rushed to him. The older guy was still saying ‘his foul’. I was quite close by, walked a little closer and said ‘chote waale ki koi galti nahin hai, tumne giraya hai, you pushed him from behind and didn’t even touch the ball’. He started to argue, knew too soon it would be futile and stopped. He walked over to the younger chap who was still howling, telling him ke kuch nahin hua, khelte hai.

I started walking back towards my house wondering if I should go back, slightly worried that the younger chap might stop playing aggressively. I wanted to talk to the younger guy and tell him that he was playing well, to keep fighting and not stop, this would keep happening. I wanted to talk to the entire team, tell them to reduce their goal to 1/4th, field size to half, not allow air balls and hit the ball with their side of the foot if they wanted to learn and enjoy more. By doing this I could have helped them improve, motivated the young guy rather than just speaking against what I felt was not right. In the short 100 meters towards my house, I realized I had more choices than the one I took. While writing this last line, I realized that there is another choice that I missed thinking of earlier, one of just walking away after the 3km run, one that I have rarely taken.