Chapter 4: Janhavi

# Chapter 4: Janhavi

## The Team

The first week was the week of learning what I did not know.

What I did not know was: everything. Everything about running that was not running-around-a-building was everything I did not know, and the everything was large — the everything was the distance between the Borivali compound and the Rajaram Vidyalaya athletics programme, the distance that was not geographical but educational, the distance between the amateur and the trained, between the instinct and the technique, between the girl who ran because it was quiet and the girls who ran because they knew how to run.

The programme had structure. The structure was Mane madam's structure — the structure of a woman who had competed at the state level and who had studied coaching at NIS Patiala (the National Institute of Sports, the institution that produced India's coaches, the institution whose certificate was the credential that Indian sports administration required and that Mane madam had earned in 2012, travelling to Patiala on a Rajdhani ticket that the school had funded and returning three months later with the certificate and the knowledge and the specific, systematic understanding of distance running that the certificate represented).

Monday was intervals. Tuesday was tempo. Wednesday was recovery. Thursday was hills. Friday was time trials. Saturday was the long run. Sunday was rest — the rest being the day that the body processed the week's work, the day that the muscles repaired and the glycogen replenished and the adaptation happened, the adaptation being the invisible change, the change that the body made between the running and the next running, the change that was the training's purpose.

I learned tempo on Tuesday. Tempo was the sustained effort — not the interval's spike-and-recover but the continuous push, the pace that was faster than comfortable and slower than fast, the pace that Mane madam described as "the pace at which you can speak three words but not a sentence," the three words being the unit of measurement, the sentence being the excess, and the gap between three words and a sentence being the gap that tempo occupied.

I ran my first tempo on the track — four laps, 1,600 metres, the pace being the pace that my body found when I asked it for three words and not a sentence. The pace was slow — six minutes per kilometre, the pace of a jogger, not a runner, the pace that Isha Gaikwad covered in four minutes and twelve seconds. But the pace was mine — the pace that my body offered after six months of not running, the pace that was the honest output of a body that was relearning.

I learned hills on Thursday. The hills were not on the track — the hills were at Panhala, the fort that sat above Kolhapur on the ridge of the Sahyadris, the fort that Shivaji Maharaj had used as a military base and that the running programme used as a training ground, the historical repurposing being the specific Maharashtrian irony of a fort built for warfare now serving as a hill-training circuit for teenage girls in salwar kameez.

The Panhala hill was 3.2 kilometres from the base to the fort gate. The gradient was eight percent — the eight percent that Mane madam had measured with a clinometer borrowed from the geography teacher and that Mane madam had recorded in her training log, the log being the document that contained the programme's entire knowledge base, the document written in Mane madam's handwriting on the pages of a Classmate notebook, the notebook being the repository of training plans and interval times and athlete assessments and the specific, accumulated wisdom of a coach who had been coaching for eleven years on a laterite track with a budget that the school allocated with the generosity of ₹28,000 per year.

₹28,000. The budget for the entire running programme for the entire year. The ₹28,000 that covered the replacement of the timing equipment (the Casio stopwatch that cost ₹1,200 and that needed replacing every two years), the first-aid supplies (the crepe bandages and the Dettol and the ice packs that the programme used when the athletes' bodies produced the injuries that training produced), and the transport to competitions (the MSRTC bus tickets that took the team to district meets and state qualifiers, the bus tickets being the largest expense, the travel being the cost of competing, the competing being the purpose of the training, the training being the purpose of the budget).

₹28,000. The amount that Isha Gaikwad's running shoes cost.

The running shoes were the divide. The divide that the programme contained — the divide between the girls who had running shoes and the girls who did not, the divide that was economic and that was visible and that the track did not care about but that the bodies cared about, the bodies being the honest assessors of footwear, the bodies that felt the difference between the Bata North Star's canvas and flat sole and the Nike's mesh and cushioned midsole, the difference being not luxury but mechanics, the mechanics being the science of foot-strike and shock absorption and energy return that running shoe companies had spent billions developing and that the development produced shoes that cost ₹8,000 and ₹12,000 and ₹28,000 and that the cost was the barrier.

Isha had the shoes. Isha's shoes were the Asics Gel-Kayano — the shoe that serious Indian distance runners wore, the shoe that cost ₹14,000 and that Isha's father had bought in Pune at the Decathlon store on the Pune-Bangalore highway, the purchase being the investment that Isha's father — Dilip Gaikwad, the man who owned the fertilizer shop on Bhausingji Road — had made in his daughter's running the way fathers invested in daughters' futures, the investment being not financial planning but faith, the faith that the ₹14,000 would return in the currency of records and selections and the specific Indian currency of sports quota admissions, the admissions being the endgame, the endgame being the college seat that sports achievement unlocked.

Rukmini had old shoes. Rukmini's shoes were the Nivia Marathon — the ₹1,800 shoe that Indian athletes bought when the ₹14,000 shoe was not possible, the shoe that was not the Asics and not the Nike but that was a running shoe, the shoe that had the cushioning and the grip and the basic mechanics that running required, the shoe being the compromise between the budget and the biomechanics.

I had the Bata. The Bata that was not a running shoe. The Bata that was collecting laterite with each session, the white becoming permanently red-white, the canvas absorbing the track's pigment the way the body was absorbing the track's lessons.

The shoes did not determine the running. This was the lie that the programme's egalitarianism required — the lie that said the shoes were irrelevant and the runner was the runner regardless of the shoes. The truth was: shoes mattered. Shoes mattered the way equipment mattered in every sport — the cricket bat, the tennis racquet, the swimming goggles — the equipment being the interface between the body and the activity, and the quality of the interface affecting the quality of the activity.

But the shoes did not determine the running entirely. This was the truth that the lie contained — the truth that the shoes were a factor and not the factor, the shoes being one variable in the equation and the other variables being the legs and the lungs and the heart and the mind and the specific, immeasurable quality that Mane madam called jidd, the Marathi word for stubbornness, the stubbornness that was not the English stubbornness (which was negative, which was the refusal to change) but the Marathi stubbornness (which was positive, which was the refusal to stop, the refusal to accept the limitation, the refusal that was not resistance but persistence).

Jidd. The word that Mane madam used when the intervals were hard and the hills were steep and the time trials were slow and the body wanted to stop. Jidd lav, Mane madam said. Put in the stubbornness. Apply the stubbornness. Use the stubbornness as the fuel that the body's physical fuel has exhausted.

The team. The team was fourteen girls — fourteen girls whose names I learned in the first week and whose running I learned in the first week and whose positions in the programme's hierarchy I learned in the first week, the hierarchy being the hierarchy that every team had, the hierarchy that was not official and not discussed but that was understood by every member with the specific social intelligence that teenagers possessed, the intelligence that mapped power structures the way cartographers mapped terrain.

The hierarchy's top was Isha. Isha Gaikwad was the programme's best runner and the programme's most silent member, the silence being not shyness but sufficiency — Isha did not speak because Isha did not need to speak, the speaking being unnecessary when the running said everything, when the seventy-one-second 400 metres said what words could not say, when the district record said what conversation could not say.

Below Isha was Pallavi. Pallavi Patil — the girl who ran the 800 metres, the girl whose event was Mane madam's old event, the girl who was Mane madam's project, the girl whose 800-metre time (2:24) was approaching Mane madam's district record (2:18) with the specific trajectory that training produced, the trajectory that was not linear but asymptotic, each second harder to remove than the previous second, the previous seconds being the easy gains and the next seconds being the hard gains and the hard gains being the gains that separated the district runner from the state runner.

Below Pallavi were the middle girls — Anagha, Sonal, Pranjali, Snehal, Komal, Gauri, Diksha, Bhagyashri. The middle girls were the programme's body — the body that trained and competed and that filled the team sheets for the district meets, the girls whose times were respectable and whose commitment was reliable and whose presence was the foundation on which the programme's reputation rested.

Below the middle girls was Rukmini. Rukmini's position was complicated — Rukmini was not the slowest (Rukmini's 400-metre time of eighty-six seconds placed her in the middle) but Rukmini was the newest of the returning members, having joined the programme only in January, and the newness was the factor that placed her below the middle despite the time that would have placed her within it.

Below Rukmini was me. I was the bottom — the newest, the slowest (ninety-four seconds), the girl in Bata shoes, the girl from Mumbai who had run around a building and who was now running on a track and who was learning the difference between the two.

The bottom was the position. The position was the starting point. The starting point was what Mane madam had said and what the programme believed and what the red track demonstrated with every session — the starting point was the place from which you started and not the place where you stayed, the starting point being temporary, the staying being a choice, and I had not chosen to stay.

The first week's time trial was on Friday. The time trial was the assessment — the formal assessment, the 1,500-metre trial that Mane madam used to measure the programme's athletes, the 1,500 metres being the standard distance for Indian scholastic athletics, the distance that the district meets and the state qualifiers used, the distance that was the programme's currency.

1,500 metres. Three and three-quarter laps of the 400-metre track. The distance that Isha Gaikwad covered in four minutes and forty-two seconds. The district record. The time that was written on Mane madam's notice board in the red ink that Mane madam used for records, the red ink being the colour of the track and the colour of achievement and the colour that every girl in the programme wanted her name written in.

I ran the 1,500 metres. I ran the 1,500 metres in seven minutes and eight seconds. 7:08. The number was the number — the number that placed me two minutes and twenty-six seconds behind Isha, the two minutes and twenty-six seconds being the distance that was not a gap but a chasm, the chasm being the honest measurement of where I was.

7:08. The number went on Mane madam's clipboard. The number went next to my name — Janhavi Bhosale, 7:08, the two items being the data point, the data point being the starting point, the starting point being the place from which the measurement began.

"Seven-oh-eight," Mane madam said. "We can work with that."

We can work with that. The sentence that did not say the time was good and did not say the time was bad and said, instead, that the time was material — the material that coaching would shape, the raw material that training would process, the input that the programme's system would convert into an output that was faster than the input.

"What time do I need?" I asked. "For district?"

"Under five-thirty," Mane madam said. "The qualifying time for the Kolhapur district meet, under-17, girls' 1,500 metres. Five minutes thirty seconds."

5:30. The qualifying time. The number that was the door — the door that opened to the district meet, the district meet that opened to the zonal meet, the zonal meet that opened to the state meet, the state meet that opened to — what? The what was the question that I was not ready to answer because I was not ready to ask, the asking requiring the ambition that ninety-four seconds and 7:08 did not yet support.

5:30. I was at 7:08. The gap was ninety-eight seconds. Ninety-eight seconds in a 1,500-metre race. The gap was — Mane madam would teach me the mathematics later — approximately 380 metres. If I ran a 1,500-metre race against a ghost that ran 5:30, the ghost would finish when I was at the 1,120-metre mark. The ghost would finish an entire curve and a half ahead of me. The ghost would be cooling down when I was still running.

Ninety-eight seconds. The work.

The first week ended. The first week was the week that taught me what I did not know, which was everything, and the everything was the starting point, and the starting point was what we had, and what we had was what we started with.

The second week began. The second week was the week that the body began to remember — not the Borivali memory but a new memory, the memory of the red track, the memory of intervals and tempo and hills and time trials, the memory that the body was building with each session, each session adding a layer to the memory the way each coat of paint added a layer to a wall, the layers being invisible individually and visible collectively, the collective being the training effect, the adaptation, the body becoming capable of what it had not been capable of before.

The second week's intervals were faster. Not fast — faster. The distinction being the distinction between the absolute and the relative, between the speed and the improvement, between the ninety-four and the ninety-one, the three seconds being the first week's gift, the gift that training gave to the body that trained.

Ninety-one. Three seconds faster. Three seconds closer to Isha's seventy-one. Twenty seconds remaining. Twenty seconds that would take weeks or months or — the thought that I did not think — maybe not come at all, the not-coming being the possibility that my body had a limit and the limit was above seventy-one and the above was the permanent gap that no training would close.

But the three seconds. The three seconds were the evidence — the evidence that the gap was not fixed, the evidence that the gap was closeable, the evidence that the closing was happening. Three seconds per week. If the improvement continued at three seconds per week (it wouldn't, Mane madam would explain — the improvement was logarithmic, not linear, each second harder than the previous, the first three seconds being easy and the last three seconds being the hardest work of the training) — but if it did, the gap would close in seven weeks.

Seven weeks. The thought was the thought of a girl who had learned to count time not in days but in seconds, not in the calendar's weeks but in the stopwatch's decimals, the counting being the runner's counting, the counting that measured not the time passing but the time improving.

The second week's 1,500 was 6:51. Seventeen seconds faster than 7:08. The seventeen seconds being the first week of training's output — the output that Mane madam recorded on the clipboard and that Mane madam placed next to the 7:08 and that the placement created a trend, the trend being downward, the downward being the direction that times went when the runner was improving, the direction that was the programme's purpose.

6:51. Fifty-one seconds still separated me from the 5:30 qualifying time. But the 7:08 was behind me. The 7:08 was the starting point and I was past the starting point and the past was the evidence that the future was different from the present and the present was different from the past and the differences were the seconds and the seconds were the work and the work was happening.

Rukmini celebrated. Rukmini celebrated the way Rukmini celebrated everything — loudly, physically, with the arm-around-shoulder and the face-close-to-face and the specific Maharashtra girl's celebration that was equal parts affection and aggression, the celebration that said I am happy for you with the volume of a person who was also happy for herself, the selfishness of celebration being the honest truth that the celebration of a friend's success was also the celebration of the friendship, the friendship being the container that held the success and the celebration together.

"Seventeen seconds!" Rukmini said. "One week. Seventeen seconds."

"It won't keep dropping that fast," I said. Mane madam had explained this. The logarithmic curve. The easy gains first, the hard gains later.

"Who cares about later," Rukmini said. "Today: seventeen seconds. Today is today."

Today is today. The sentence that was Rukmini's philosophy — the philosophy of a girl who lived in the present with the specific commitment of a person who had decided that the present was the only time that was real, the past being memory and the future being speculation and the present being the moment when the legs were on the track and the lungs were breathing and the friend was beside you and the seventeen seconds were the evidence that the running was working.

Today is today. The sentence that I borrowed from Rukmini. The sentence that I repeated to myself in the yellow room at night, lying on the bed, looking at the ceiling. Today is today. The today being: 6:51. The today being: the second week. The today being: Kolhapur, the red track, the Bata shoes, the team, the girl who ran like water twenty seconds ahead of me in the 400 and fifty-one seconds ahead of me in the 1,500.

Today is today. Tomorrow: we go again.