I’m actually quite an active person. I enjoy things like sitting and watching TV and stuff but I go a bit funny if I can’t exercise regularly. Fortunately I have opportunities to exercise here but there are some interesting elements to it that I don’t experience at home. First the big benefit: my running route takes me along the banks of the Ganges River and I can see India on the other side. If I catch it during sun rise or sun set which I usually do the sun is a huge red orb that actually looks like the Bangladeshi flag, it hangs suspended in the calm warm air, its doppelganger mirrored exactly in the glassy water.
The next rather lovely thing is that on my run the other day I came across a bunch of lads playing football. I’ve been looking for someone to play football with since I got here and now there are loads of them! Now, this struck me as a good thing but after five minutes on the pitch I was beginning to have some doubts. Firstly I hadn’t realised quite how unfit I was. My heart was palpitating in my chest and I was drenched with sweat. This wouldn’t be so bad if I could have sat back and let the game go on but I’m a ‘Bideshi’ you see, a foreigner. This of course means that I’m incredible at football, my legs a dizzying blur of step-overs and shimmies, able to score from fourty yards with my arse. And so every little bugger on my team immediately passed the ball to me expecting me to run and score. I did nothing of the sort. I stumbled on the uneven ground, gave the ball to the opposition and looked tired and apologetic. Luckily this tactic worked nicely as within twenty minutes they were barely passing the ball to me at all and I was able to feel my legs again. I love playing though because, for the time I’m on that pitch, nothing else really exists. Any problems and work I have to catch up on are left on the bench, there’s only the game.
Back to the jogging. When I’m at home in England I generally find jogging to be quite a zen activity. Here though it’s become...well...really weird. I’ll use the run I went on tonight to illustrate the point. If someone is running and looking very tired and puffed-out then the logical thing would not be to try and strike up a conversation with them. Not here. I am thus bombarded with questions and attempts to engage me in light-hearted banter. Today I was asked what country I’m from a total of ten times on a half hour run. I counted. Another feller rode next me on his bike and implored me to stop so that he could talk to me. I thought, ‘No! Why should I stop? If you want to talk to me you can bloody well keep up.’ Then there’s the heckling youths who, in fairness, plague many-a-run in England. There was one young lad who was posing on his motorbike with a girl riding on the back. He thought he would pit himself and his bike against me and my trainers. Is it just me or does that sound like a waste of petrol? All I can say is that I hope the girl was duly impressed. Then there’s the gaggle of smaller kids who cheer and clap me along. Now this is nice but I suddenly feel obliged to run like a marathon runner to live up to such a reception. So in between dodging motorbike racers, water buffalo, hecklers, fans, rickshaws, serial conversation-seekers, and a whole host of beautiful women in saris who I want to impress I’m actually getting pretty fit.
