Thane Mayor's Half Marathon (Varsha Marathon)

Today, I walked the half-marathon organized by the Thane city mayor. It was supposed to be flagged off from the Thane Municipal Corp. headquarters at 8.30 am. I reached there on time, but the race start was delayed for multiple reasons. I also had not entered officially for the race. Thus, I started off along the race route on my own at about 8.45. I had already decided that I would walk the whole distance, may be run a little bit for fun.

The route was - TMC - Highway service road to Teen Haath Naka - LBS Marg to Mulund checknaka - Wagle Estate - Kores Colony - Vartak Nagar - Pokhran #2 Circle - Vasant Vihar - Ghodbunder Road - highway service road to Teen Haath Naka - Hari Niwas - Back to TMC. A big chunk of the route was new concrete streets, other parts were half done tar roads or roads full of potholes (or pot-wells or pot-lakes!). Along the route, there was the new Thane to see - the tall apartment buildings, with commercial security and the new stores that had replaced the old factories, mixed with older, smaller, dilapidated-looking buildings yet to be replaced, and some jhopdis. The route went all the way to the foothills of Yeoor and cut through a fair chunk of the new Thane across the highway.

Some sundry notes, in no particular order:

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the initial stretch of the marathon was set up. Road blocks had been erected, there were signs at every kilometer, and there was police presence at every major intersection, stopping vehicles from entering the route. There were also a lot of Palika Safai workers, who apparently had just finished cleaning roads along the route. Only some traces of the garbage that usually lines some of the streets could be seen. There were also several waiting spectators.

I walked the first 4-5 kilometers by myself, before the real participants in the race passed me, near the Yeoor foothills. The lead runner, and several others chasing him at that point were barefoot. There were quite a few women also running (I counted a total of about 25-30 that passed me).

The barefeet runners were easily identified by the slapping sounds their feet made against the roads. The runners with sneakers by contrast, made a much softer sound.

The course had way too many potholes, little stones, and other hazards along the road to be running barefeet. The hard surface of the tar and concrete couldn't have made it any easier. Kudos to all those barefeet runners!

I am quite sure thousands of rupees were spent on the huge banners all around the city, with huge images of Uddhav and Bal Thackeray, Anand Dighe, Mayor Rajan Vichare, all and sundry local sena leaders, and even, Matoshri Thackeray, and Matoshri Dighe. There were also two large shamianas at the starting point, a huge sound system to drum up enthusiasm, and so on. Why didn't some of this money go to support the lead runners who were running without shoes on? The stated aim of the marathon was to prepare state runners for national and international events. Couldn't proper gear be provided, at least to the lead runners? (It appears that the only group of elite runners that had some shoes on were from the Army). The money spent on erecting huge banners of people who in their entire lives have probably never participated in any significant athletic activity, let alone a marathon, could've been better spent that way. Shiv Sena, and Shiv Sainiks, are you listening?

Apparently, more than 50,000 participants had registered for the marathon. No more than 500 must've passed me by the time I finished the race. Where did all these people go? (Well, there are some answers: There were not 50,000 participants for the full distance - the women's race ended at the 15 km mark, the children's race was even shorter, the senior citizen's race was a couple hundred meters at best, and most vitally, the participation numbers were inflated by the compulsory registration of schoolchildren from the municipal schools. Again, the publicity needs of having organized the largest marathon ever triumphed any realities!

A big thank you to the much maligned and oft neglected civic workers - police personnel, safai workers and the numerous other city officials who contributed to the event. The police and safai workers had been out in the rain since 6 am, making arrangements.

Apparently there is another marathon this coming weekend (30th July). The Mayor's Varsha marathon was a Satish Pradhan promoted event for the past 16 years. Now that he has switched from the Shiv Sena to Congress, it seems he's taken the marathon with him. So one week after the Sena-sponsored marathon, there's going to be a Congress-marathon. Amazing that the civic authorities can be subjected to the stress of hosting two marathons, for such petty political reasons

By my obervation, the largest cheering crowds were in the lower middle class areas, where people were on the streets in huge numbers. They were enthusiastic, cheering everyone on with "Come on", "Bhaago", "Run" and so on. By comparison, near large apartment buildings like Kores, Runwal and Hiranandani complexes, hardly anyone noticed the runners.

Heavy rains started around the time I was near the 16 km mark, and continued for about a half hour. Incredible to walk in such rain! Fortunately, during most of this time, I was on the pothole-free stretch.

Around the 19 km mark, my thighs started cramping up. At this point, I had to start running, for that was the only way to avoid the pain in the thighs and keep going.

Oh, yes. My time for the half-marathon distance was 3 hours 5 minutes.

The Lone Surfer Tour 2005

Yesterday evening, I went for Davy and Pete Rothbart's (buddies from my ultimate frisbee group) "Found" show. They had been on tour across North America, doing shows in 51 cities in 54 days (wow!). The tour was to promote Davy's (awesome) new collection of short stories "The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas" and to share and collect new "found" stuff.

Davy puts out the "Found" magazine - a collection of notes, to-do lists, letters, diaries and all kinds of other things - lost by their authors, and subsequently "found" by someone else. It is a rather odd concept - printing a magazine of found objects and creating a show based on it. Davy makes it work and how! He imagines the remainder of the persons' lives, from the snippet that he gets to see. He writes stories about them. He weaves their notes into anecdotes, and some ribald comedy. And Pete writes songs, sometimes based on found stuff, borrowing and extending lyrics, and adding his own touch, to create songs such as "Damn! The Booty Don't Stop" (You've to hear it performed live! Its awesome, vulgar, funny, an absolute blast!!). Together, they are terrific entertainment!

Davy's book, "The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas", is a collection short stories. Here's what he says about his inspiration for the title story, and his book:

A few years ago, I was driving on a small two-lane highway through rural Kansas when I saw a bizarre and riveting sight—-a teenage kid had slung a surfboard between two dead tractors in the middle of a cornfield and was balanced on top, like he was practicing how to surf. Here he was, thousands of miles from either coast, the sun setting in glorious colors behind him—-I was mesmerized and sat there watching for ten minutes or so, and then I drove away; I don’t think he even saw me. But that image of him surfing in the cornfields stuck with me, and my curiosity about him kept growing more intense, so finally I decided to write a story about him, imagining what his life was like and what might have happened had our paths intersected. I called the story The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas (Montana is the name of a tiny town in Kansas) and it’s the title story of my new book.

I just finished reading a few other stories from the book. They are really good. The heroes of Davy's stories are mostly young men who haven't found a path in life. Narrating in the first person, Davy provides the reader a close-up of his characters. Davy's stories are set in odd places across America - an old people's nursing home in Florida, a strip joint in a Mexican border town, a prison in Michigan, and in the title story, rural Kansas. The characters are raw, their language coarse, and their feelings out in the open for anyone to see. They are humane, rough, compassionate, mean, lost. And just when it seems that they've "found" themselves, the world seems to crumble around them. Thus, a lost love, a sad father, and a congenitally lying dead friend. Davy's characters don't find redemption - that would be too easy. Rather, they are left alone to themselves. In a way, the stories are just like the found stuff Davy works with - snapshots of a stranger's life, accidentally found.

Hats off, Davy! (and yeah, see you on the field soon!)

Grand Canyon Trip

The last weekend of August, I hiked the Grand Canyon - rim-to-rim. The travelogue and a few pictures are here. Comments/feedback welcome.

Grand Canyon is awesome. A must-do hike.