Chapter 6: Janhavi

# Chapter 6: Janhavi

## The Shoes

The shoes came on a Saturday.

The Saturday was the third Saturday in Kolhapur — the third Saturday being the day when the programme ran its long run, the long run being the run that was not on the track but on the road, the road being the Kolhapur-Panhala road that climbed from the city to the fort, the road that was 6.4 kilometres of ascending gradient that began at the Panhala toll naka and ended at the Rajdindi point, the point from which you could see all of Kolhapur spread below you like a map that someone had crumpled and then partially smoothed.

The long run was the programme's Saturday ritual — the ritual that Mane madam had instituted because the long run was the distance runner's foundation, the foundation being the aerobic base, the base being the engine's size, the engine that powered the intervals and the tempo and the time trials and the races. The long run built the engine. The engine powered the speed. The speed won the races.

I ran the long run in Bata shoes. The Bata shoes that had been white and were now the colour of the laterite track and the Kolhapur dust and the three weeks of daily training that had deposited their pigment on the canvas. The Bata shoes that were not running shoes and that the road's gradient punished — the gradient sending shockwaves through the flat sole and into the ankle and the knee and the hip, the shockwaves being the road's communication, the road saying: these shoes are not for me, these shoes are for classrooms and corridors and the flat surfaces of a life that does not climb.

I ran the long run despite the shoes. The running despite was the running that the programme required — the programme not having a shoe budget, the programme's ₹28,000 not stretching to the fourteen pairs that fourteen athletes needed, the programme's response to the shoe problem being the same as the programme's response to every resource problem: we start with what we have.

The long run's pace was slow — the slow that Mane madam prescribed for the long run, the slow being deliberate, the slow being the pace at which the body burned fat instead of glycogen, the fat-burning being the aerobic training's purpose, the purpose being the building of the engine that would later run at the speeds that the glycogen-burning required. Slow now, fast later. The sequence was the sequence.

I ran beside Rukmini. Rukmini ran beside me because Rukmini's default was beside — beside in the classroom, beside in the lunch break, beside on the track, beside on the road. Rukmini's beside-ness was the quality that made Rukmini essential — not essential to the programme's competitive results but essential to the programme's survival, essential because programmes survived not on the talent of the best but on the commitment of the rest, and the commitment of the rest was maintained by the Rukiminis, the girls who ran in the middle and who ran beside and who made the running communal rather than solitary.

"My father called last night," I said. The sentence arrived between the second and third kilometre, the sentence having been in my mouth since the morning, the sentence waiting for the specific conditions of the long run to emerge — the conditions being the rhythm and the breathing and the road's distraction and the running's specific ability to lower the barriers that the standing self maintained.

Rukmini did not respond immediately. Rukmini understood — Rukmini understood the way girls understood, which was not the way of questions but the way of waiting, the waiting being the space that the sentence needed, the space that allowed the next sentence to arrive.

"He called Maushi's phone," I continued. "At 11 PM. Maushi answered. He asked for Aai. Aai didn't take the phone."

"Where is he?"

"He said Nashik. He didn't say why Nashik."

"Did he ask about you?"

"He asked Maushi how I was. Maushi said fine. He said good. That was it."

"That was it?"

"Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds of a phone call after three years."

The road climbed. The climbing was the physical metaphor that the conversation did not need but that the road provided anyway — the climbing being the effort, the effort being the thing that the conversation shared with the running, the conversation being difficult and the running being difficult and the difficulty being the connector.

"Are you okay?" Rukmini asked.

The question. The question that people asked and that the answer to was always the same and that the sameness of the answer was the problem — the answer being yes or fine or okay, the words that were the doors that closed the conversation, the doors that the asker accepted because the asker did not want the real answer any more than the answerer wanted to give it.

"No," I said. "I'm not okay. I'm angry."

The anger was the new thing. The anger was the thing that had arrived with the phone call — the phone call at 11 PM to Maushi's phone, the phone call that was thirty seconds of a man checking on a daughter he had abandoned, the checking being not care but guilt, the guilt being not love but the residue of love, the residue that remained after the love had been withdrawn, the residue that was insufficient for a phone call and that had produced a phone call anyway, the phone call being the worst thing — worse than the silence, worse than the three years of not calling, because the calling said I remember you and the remembering without the returning was the cruelty that silence did not contain.

"Angry is good," Rukmini said.

"Angry is good?"

"Angry is better than sad. Angry moves. Sad sits."

Angry moves. Sad sits. The sentence was Rukmini's sentence — the sentence that came from wherever Rukmini's sentences came from, the place that was not books or teachers but the specific intelligence of a girl who observed the world and who converted the observations into phrases that were more useful than the observations themselves.

Angry moves. I ran. The anger moved. The anger moved through the legs and into the road and the road absorbed the anger the way the road absorbed the footstrike, the absorption being the surface's gift, the surface receiving what the runner gave and returning a fraction and the fraction being the push, the push being the forward motion, the forward motion being the running.

The long run ended at Rajdindi point. The view was the view — Kolhapur below, the Panchganga river's silver thread, the temple's sikhara, the green that was the sugarcane's green, the sugarcane that was Kolhapur district's primary crop, the crop that became jaggery, the jaggery that was always in the air.

Mane madam timed us at the finish. Mane madam's stopwatch clicked and Mane madam's pen recorded and the recording was the data that the programme accumulated, the data being the training log, the log being the history of every athlete's every effort.

"Good run," Mane madam said. The good run was the assessment that Mane madam gave when the effort was appropriate and the pace was correct and the run had accomplished what the run was designed to accomplish.

I walked back down. The descent was the rest — the body descending what it had climbed, the descent being the reward, the reward being the easiness after the hardness, the contrast that made the easiness sweeter.

The shoes arrived when I got home.

The shoes were on the table in the front room — the room that was the living room and the dining room and the everything room, the room where the television was and the sofa was and the steel almari was and the table was and the shoes were on the table, and the shoes were in a box, and the box was a Decathlon box, and the Decathlon box was the box that contained running shoes.

Aai was in the kitchen. Aai's face was the face that I had seen before — the face that Aai wore when Aai had done something that Aai was not sure was right, the face that was decision mixed with doubt, the decision being the thing done and the doubt being the wondering whether the thing done was the thing that should have been done.

"Open it," Aai said.

I opened the box. The shoes were inside — the shoes being the Kalenji Run Support, the Decathlon house brand, the running shoe that cost ₹2,499, the shoe that was not the Asics (₹14,000) and not the Nike (₹8,000) but that was a running shoe, the shoe that had the cushioning and the grip and the mesh and the specific construction that differentiated a running shoe from a canvas shoe, the construction being the engineering that running shoes contained and that Bata North Stars did not.

₹2,499. The amount that was — I calculated with the specific speed of a girl who understood her household's economics the way she understood her running times, precisely, in real time — the amount that was three days of Aai's salary. Aai worked at the zilla parishad office — the district council, the government body that employed Aai as a clerk, the clerk's salary being ₹24,000 per month, the ₹24,000 being the salary on which a woman and a daughter lived in Kolhapur, the ₹24,000 being divided among: rent (₹8,000), food (₹6,000), school fees (₹3,000), electricity and water (₹1,500), transport (₹1,000), and the remaining ₹4,500 that was the margin, the margin that was savings and emergencies and the occasional expense that the budget did not plan for, the occasional expense that today was a pair of running shoes.

Three days' salary. The three days that Aai had sacrificed — not sacrificed, invested, the investing being the word that Aai would use if I asked and that I would not ask because the asking would require Aai to articulate the investment's logic and the logic would require Aai to say what Aai did not say, which was: I believe in your running, I believe that the running is worth the three days, I believe that the Bata shoes are holding you back and the holding back is the thing I can fix, and the fixing of the fixable things is the thing that I do because the unfixable things — the husband who left, the city that was sold, the life that was disassembled — the unfixable things are the things I cannot fix and the fixable things are the things I must.

"Aai," I said.

"Try them on," Aai said. The sentence was the sentence that closed the conversation about the price and opened the conversation about the purpose, Aai redirecting from the cost to the function, from the sacrifice to the utility.

I tried them on. The shoes went on the feet — the feet that had been in Bata North Stars for three weeks, the feet that had learned the laterite through the canvas sole, the feet that had absorbed the shockwaves and the heat and the red dust through the minimal protection that the Bata provided.

The Kalenji was different. The Kalenji was — the feet recognised the difference immediately, the way a hand recognised the difference between a rough surface and a smooth surface, the recognition being tactile, instantaneous, pre-verbal. The cushioning. The foam that sat between the foot and the ground, the foam that absorbed the shockwave that the Bata had transmitted, the absorption being the difference, the difference being: this is a running shoe. This is the tool that runners use. This is the interface between the body and the surface that is designed for the interface rather than repurposed for it.

I stood in the shoes. I bounced. The bounce was the test — the test that runners performed when trying shoes, the bounce that assessed the midsole's response, the midsole being the shoe's heart, the heart that pumped the energy back into the foot, the energy return being the mechanic that made running shoes different from walking shoes, the mechanic being: you give the shoe your force and the shoe gives some of it back.

The Kalenji gave back. The giving back was the feeling — the feeling that the ground was not an enemy but a collaborator, the ground receiving the footstrike and returning a push, the push being the assistance, the assistance being the thing that Bata had not provided and that the Kalenji did provide and that the providing was the difference.

"Good?" Aai asked.

"Good."

"Then they're good."

The simplicity. Aai's simplicity. The simplicity of a woman who did not know the mechanics of midsole foam and energy return and pronation control and all the technical language that running shoe companies used to describe what they sold. Aai knew: the shoes were good. The good was sufficient. The good was the return on three days' salary.

I wore the Kalenji to the track on Monday. The track saw the Kalenji the way the track saw everything — with the specific indifference of a surface that did not care about the shoes but that responded differently to different shoes, the response being the physics, the physics being the interaction between the shoe's sole and the laterite's surface, the interaction being measured not in theory but in the body's experience of the interaction.

The experience was: faster. Not dramatically faster — the shoes did not transform 7:08 into 5:30, the shoes were not magic, magic being the thing that marketing promised and that physics denied. But faster — measurably faster, the measure being the stopwatch, the stopwatch being the arbiter.

Monday's intervals. The 400 metres. My time: eighty-seven seconds. From ninety-one (last week, Bata shoes) to eighty-seven (this week, Kalenji). Four seconds. Four seconds that were the sum of two contributions — the shoes' contribution (the cushioning, the grip, the energy return) and the training's contribution (the third week's adaptation, the body's continued improvement). The four seconds were the sum. The separation of the sum into its components was impossible — impossible to say how much was the shoes and how much was the training, the impossibility being the running's complexity, the complexity that the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other contained.

But four seconds. Eighty-seven. Sixteen seconds behind Isha's seventy-one. The gap was closing. The gap was closing at the rate of — I calculated — approximately four seconds per week, the rate being the rate of a body that was training and that was now properly shod and that was motivated and that had the jidd and that had the anger and that had the spark and that was converting all of these inputs into the single output that mattered: the time.

Friday's 1,500: 6:22. From 6:51 to 6:22. Twenty-nine seconds in one week. The improvement was — Mane madam's eyebrows went up, the eyebrows being the punctuation that Mane madam's face provided, the eyebrows going up for the unexpected, the unexpected being a twenty-nine-second improvement in one week when the expected improvement for week three was eight to twelve seconds.

"Shoes?" Mane madam asked.

"Aai bought me Kalenji."

"Hmm." The hmm was the assessment — the assessment of a coach who understood that shoes mattered and that training mattered and that the combination of the two was greater than either alone. "The shoes are ten seconds. The rest is you."

Ten seconds from shoes. Nineteen seconds from training. The separation that Mane madam performed with the expertise of a coach who had seen the shoe-effect many times — the effect of a girl transitioning from casual shoes to running shoes, the transition producing a one-time improvement that was distinct from the training's continuous improvement, the one-time being the shoes and the continuous being the body.

6:22. The number was — the number was important because the number was Isha's starting number. The number that Isha had been at age thirteen, the number that was Isha's origin, the number from which Isha's journey to 4:42 had begun.

I was at 6:22 after three weeks. Isha had been at 6:22 after three years. The comparison was not a comparison — the comparison was unfair because the starting conditions were different (Isha had started at ten with Aaji's coaching, I had started at sixteen with a building compound) and the bodies were different and the contexts were different and the only thing that was the same was the number, and the number was a coincidence, and the coincidence was not meaningful.

But the number felt meaningful. The number felt like a marker — a marker that said this is where she was and this is where you are and the where-she-was is now the where-you-are and the matching of the two is the evidence that the trajectory is possible.

Possible. The word that was stronger than maybe. The word that was the third week's word — the word that had grown from maybe (week one) to something more than maybe (week two) to possible (week three), the growth being the evidence's growth, the evidence being the times that dropped and the seconds that closed and the gap that shrank.

Possible. The word that I carried home on Friday evening, through the Kolhapur evening, past the jasmine sellers and the temple and the tambda rassa hotels, the word sitting in my chest the way a laddoo sat in a tiffin box — contained, carried, waiting to be consumed.

6:22. The number that was Isha's beginning and my present. The number that said: the race is possible. The race between the girl who ran like water and the girl who ran like anger, the girl who had the Asics and the girl who had the Kalenji, the girl who held the record and the girl who was coming.

The girl who was coming. The girl who was me. The girl in the new shoes, on the red track, in the Kolhapur evening.

Coming. The word that runners used. Coming from behind. Coming up. Coming through.

Coming.