As an infant, I ran because I was excited to walk. It was the newness of that functionality that mattered. Moving from one edge of the room to the other, the many worlds of things revealing themselves to me with a rush still so tender.
In high school, I ran to win. Sprint racing, like debating and spelling bees, was another way to access my competitiveness. I ran at inter-house sports, ran to the parking lot when the bells went off at 4 pm; I ran aimlessly during recess, sweat patches attacking the white of my shirt. Most times at the end of races, the sun’s skin as harsh as whips against my back, I found myself bent over, both hands cusped on my knees, gulping air so violently as the school’s Red Cross team scooped heaps of glucose into a cup of water only half full. In my breathlessness, I was satisfied by the fact that I had won yet another race.
During my undergraduate years, I used to run to think. I would explore concepts I later presented to my class on neo-liberalism or feminism; the first sentence of my thesis on the revolution of media in Africa came to me as I ran. I had paused to take notes on my phone. Sometimes these sentences were incomplete but carried a value I would later uncover, feeling so grateful for going for a run that morning.
When I lived in Mauritius, I ran very early in the morning and sometimes late at night. I ran the most in the summer when lavish pink appeared in the neat beech hedges that lined the clean streets of the village. As I have grown older, as my body has increased with its demand for wellness and care, I have come to appreciate the moments I sweat. I have become more conscious about keeping fit, about the oil I use in cooking. Though I still find it difficult to resist bread, though a bottle of Coca-Cola has a usefulness to it that is so mighty, it feels religious.
At the gym, where I spend an hour every morning, there is a man in his 50s. He does not look his age, and though I am wary of such confessions, particularly among strangers, I find myself saying this to him one morning. He laughs, a laugh that sits in a memory bank, one he often uses, particularly in situations like this, I am sure.
He is a small but heavy-bodied man with a thick beard that lends him an artistic air. But he does not hold a brush or spend hours in studios. Like me, his daily fulfilment comes from working corporate. It is hard to know what exactly brings people to the gym. Some are there to lose weight; some produce loud grunts as they carry heavier weights, spinning in front of mirrors for the miracle of growing pecs. Some are like me: partly avoiding the morning rush hour traffic and somewhat keeping checks on their health. People have different needs. He tells me of his 9-6 pm job and says the gym is his way of staying sane, a habit he has curated for long years. He tells me how he spends fifteen minutes on the treadmill and another fifteen skipping; he does small push-ups in between. Sometimes he uses free weights to pump his biceps.
I do not run as I used to anymore, and the unique nature of corporate work requires the body to be in a position, often for long hours. Often, long hours rush after long hours, and the only movements the body has witnessed are dancing fingers against keyboards. And so, I use the gym to regulate my body and mind, to align them to the spirit of who I am.
Last year, when the second phase of the pandemic broke, my friend’s father, who had spent almost three decades working corporate, said he was deficient of Vitamin D. He attributed this deficiency to spending long hours nestled in air-conditioned spaces, entirely shy of the sun. Almost 60, he now walks four miles every morning, giving his entire body to the sun safe for his nose and mouth that are shielded by a white mask.
Any health advice falls on a spectrum. Some people need a simple solution or recommendation and can find that through a blog or news story. Others require a more complex, deeper conversation with a medical practitioner. But when it comes to being and staying healthy, consistency is the most admirable quality. That act of showing up – of knowing that this vehicle through which you laugh and cry, eat and sleep, fall in and out of love, is deserving of care for its usefulness. It is that.
