Not Quite Born to Run

You can take the Indian out of India, but you can’t take India out of the Indian. I learnt that last week.

It was blazing heat outside. Summer showing us what we’d be missing in a few weeks. The natives outside my balcony had stripped down to the bare minimum. Some had gone further. I’d had to avert my gaze.

It was only I who dithered, one foot in the balcony, one inside the room, testing waters so to speak. Except that the waters were trickling down my back. ‘I can’t go out in that sun,’ the Indian in me moaned.

The husband actually looked up from his trolling. ‘You want to win that prize, don’t you?’

‘I don’t even know what the prize is.’ Moans and whinges, as has been stated before, only serve to get the husband’s back up. Even when he’s lolling on a sofa. Blinds firmly pulled to keep out the sun.

‘Go!’

And I went. To walk in the heat. Drag my Fitbit to the 10,000 steps that was my daily mandate. To meet the requirements of the Book Club. Where I’d proposed Born to Run as our next read. In the hope that I would finally be able to look the son in the eye at the next video call in early October and say, ‘There, I’ve read it.’

I have often found myself in life situations which beep Error 404 Not Found at me. No exit clause to be found. Password not recognised. Like the time I was taken to the maze at Hampton Court. And left there. That was where I found myself now. Without an exit clause, that is. And Error 404 beeping frantically at me.

For the organiser of our Zoom Book Club had taken to my book suggestion enthusiastically. Too enthusiastically, I might say. And, in a bizarre turn, proposed a competition to see which of us readers could notch up the most exercise time/miles in the month before we discussed the book. I mean, what turned that bookworm?

Minus abovementioned exit clause, I decided to give it a go. Treat it like a kickstart to the exercise regimen I’d been promising the husband since February.

‘Read that book!’ said the son. Yet again. ‘And start running!’ I was (almost!) getting used to this game. Feint, parry, thrust. Begin again.

‘I’m not Mexican,’ I told him. Yes, I had read the first ten pages.

Which is why I found myself outside on the hot pavement that day. If not run, then walk. Which I did doggedly for the next five days. Then flopped onto the sofa the minute the husband went to raise his bodily chocolate index. This was so not happening. Not least because one member of the Book Club was walking and cycling more miles in a day than I would care to do in a car.

The organiser must have read the heat waves emanating from my brain. She announced a special prize for me for suggesting the book that had got us – or at least those of us who were not sweltering in India – off our couches. It didn’t matter that she still made no mention of what the prizes were. It was like balm to my soul, well, an ice pack to my sore muscles.

It might be time to cast on a scarf for her. And, oh yes, read Born to Run. I have to now, don’t I? October is here. Next, we’ll worry about the running.