Chapter 8: Isha

# Chapter 8: Isha

## The Notebook

The girl from Mumbai ran 5:41 at Sangli. I ran 4:38.

Sixty-three seconds. The gap had been sixty-six before the race. The gap was now sixty-three. The closing was three seconds — three seconds that the race had shaved from the distance between us, the shaving being small and the direction being consistent and the consistency being the thing that I recorded in my notebook on Saturday night, the night after Sangli, the night when the notebook received the data that the race had produced.

The notebook was the record. The notebook was the Classmate notebook — the same brand that Mane madam used, the same brand that every student in Maharashtra used, the brand being the standard, the standard being ₹30 for 172 pages, the 172 pages being the surface on which I tracked the only thing that I tracked: the running.

Page one: my times. The column of numbers that descended from 6:22 (age thirteen, first trial) to 4:38 (today, Sangli district meet), the descent being the story, the story being told in numbers, the numbers being the language that running spoke and that I spoke and that the notebook translated from the track's experience to the page's record.

Page seven: Janhavi Bhosale. The page that I had started on her third day — the day I noticed the closed mouth. The page that now read:

Week 1: 7:08 (1500), 94 (400). Bata shoes. Nasal breathing.* *Week 2: 6:51 (1500), 91 (400). Training effect — 17 sec improvement.* *Week 3: 6:22 (1500), 87 (400). New shoes (Kalenji). Shoe + training = 29 sec.* *Week 4: 6:04 (1500), 84 (400). Rate slowing. Expected.* *Week 5: 5:48 (1500), 82 (400). Logarithmic curve beginning.* *Week 6: 5:41 (Sangli, synthetic). First race. Positive split — too fast start. Potential if she learns pacing.

The data told the story that the data always told — the story of a body responding to training, the response being rapid at first and slowing as the body approached its current capacity, the current capacity being the limit that the current training had produced and that additional training would extend and that the extending was the work.

But the data also told another story — a story that the numbers alone did not contain but that the observations contained, the observations being the qualitative data that I recorded alongside the quantitative, the qualitative being: closed mouth, nasal breathing, does not show pain, does not quit intervals, ran the Panhala hill without walking, ran 5:41 in first race and processed the result with analysis not emotion.

The qualitative data said: this girl is serious.

The seriousness was the thing that I respected — not the time, which was slow, not the technique, which was developing, not the experience, which was zero, but the seriousness. The seriousness of a girl who processed a 5:41 not as a failure but as data, who heard Mane madam's split analysis and understood it, who identified the positive split as the problem and the even split as the solution and who would, I expected, return to the track on Monday with the specific intention of running even splits.

I respected the seriousness because the seriousness was mine. The seriousness was the quality that I carried — the quality that my teammates called quiet and that Mane madam called focused and that Baba called eklavya-pan, the Eklavya-ness, the reference being to the Mahabharata's archer who trained alone because the guru had refused him and whose alone-training had produced mastery and whose mastery was the proof that the guru was not necessary, the self was sufficient.

I was not alone — I had Mane madam, I had the programme, I had the track. But the seriousness was alone — the seriousness was the quality that lived inside and that did not require company and that was, in fact, diluted by company, the dilution being the reason I wore earphones on the bus and sat in the front row and maintained the distance that was not unfriendliness but preservation.

Preservation of what? Of the focus. The focus that the notebook represented — the focus that converted the running into numbers and the numbers into strategy and the strategy into the next training session's intention. The focus that said: the race is the thing and the thing is the number and the number is the target and the target is the pursuing.

The target: 4:30. The state-qualifying time for the under-17 1,500 metres. The time that would take me from the district to the state meet in Pune, the meet that was the stage that I needed, the stage from which the national selectors watched, the national selectors being the people who chose the athletes who represented Maharashtra at the nationals, the nationals being the event that I had not yet reached and that I intended to reach and that the reaching was the year's purpose.

4:30. Eight seconds faster than 4:38. Eight seconds that were — I understood the mathematics — harder than the eighty seconds that Janhavi had dropped in six weeks. Eight seconds at the elite level were the equivalent of eighty seconds at the beginner level — the equivalence being the logarithmic curve's teaching, the curve that said the closer you got to the limit the harder each second became.

Eight seconds. The work of the next two months — November through January, the training months, the months between Sangli and the zonal qualifiers in January and the state meet in February.

The morning run. Sunday morning — the day that the programme rested but that I did not rest, the Sunday being the day that I ran alone, the alone-running being the extra training that was not in Mane madam's programme but that was in mine, the mine being the self-coaching that I had learned from Aaji.

Aaji. My father's mother. Yashoda Gaikwad, the woman who had run the Kolhapur half-marathon at fifty-four and who had trained on the Panhala road before the Panhala road was a training circuit, when the Panhala road was just a road, the road that connected the city to the fort and that Aaji ran because Aaji believed that running was the Marathas' inheritance — the inheritance of Shivaji's soldiers who ran the ghats, the soldiers whose fitness was the fitness of a people who lived in mountains and who moved through mountains and whose movement was the running that the mountains required.

Aaji had taught me to run when I was ten. Aaji had taught me the things that Mane madam later reinforced and that Aaji's teaching had made receptive to the reinforcing — the breathing (nasal, controlled, the mouth as the last resort), the rhythm (the body finding its own rhythm rather than imposing a rhythm from outside), the hill (the gradient being the teacher that the flat surface was not, the gradient teaching the body to work against the force that the flat surface did not apply).

Aaji had died when I was fourteen. Aaji had died in September — the September that was the month after the monsoon, the month that Kolhapur called the clearing month, the month when the rains stopped and the sky opened and the Sahyadris showed themselves again after the monsoon's grey curtain. Aaji died on a Tuesday morning — a morning that was clear and blue and that was the morning that Aaji had chosen (this was the family's belief, the belief being that Aaji had chosen the morning because the morning was beautiful and because Aaji had lived a life that included beauty and because the choosing of a beautiful morning was Aaji's final aesthetic decision).

Aaji's death was the event that converted my running from recreation to vocation. The conversion was not immediate — the conversion happened over the weeks and months after September, the weeks when I ran the Panhala road that Aaji had run and the running was the grieving and the grieving was the running, the two being the same activity expressed through the same body, the body that Aaji had trained and that was now running in Aaji's absence the way a clock continued ticking after the clockmaker's death.

The clock. The metaphor that I did not use because the metaphor was literary and I was not literary, I was numerical. The notebook was numerical. The times were numerical. The grief was — the grief was the thing that the numbers did not contain and that the running did contain and that the containing was the running's purpose, the purpose that preceded the competition and that underlay the competition and that the competition was built on the way a building was built on a foundation and the foundation was invisible but the building depended on it.

I ran the Panhala road on Sunday morning. 5:00 AM — the time that the alarm sounded and that the body obeyed and that the obedience was the discipline and the discipline was the tribute, the tribute to Aaji who had run at 5:00 AM every morning and whose 5:00 AM was now my 5:00 AM.

The road was dark. The dark of the pre-dawn — the dark that was not the city's dark (the city having streetlights and the streetlights providing the minimum illumination that the municipality maintained) but the road's dark, the road that left the city and climbed the hill and that the climbing placed beyond the streetlights' reach, the reach ending at the toll naka and the beyond being the dark that the headlamp provided.

The headlamp was the tool — the ₹450 LED headlamp from the Decathlon that Baba had bought when I started the morning runs, the headlamp that strapped to the forehead and that cast a cone of light that illuminated three metres ahead, the three metres being the visibility, the visibility being sufficient for the running because the road was the road and the road did not change and the three metres were the three metres that the next three strides required and the next three strides were the only strides that mattered.

Three metres. The philosophy. The philosophy of the headlamp and the philosophy of the running and the philosophy that I had not articulated but that the notebook's pages expressed — the philosophy of the immediate, the next three strides, the next interval, the next second. Not the year. Not the career. The next three metres that the headlamp illuminated.

The Panhala road climbed. The climb was the work — the eight-percent gradient that Mane madam had measured and that my legs had memorized, the memorization being the body's specific knowledge of the road, the knowledge that said: this section is steep, this section levels briefly, this section curves left and the curve adds difficulty because the inside leg works harder on the curve's incline.

I ran the 3.2 kilometres in fourteen minutes and forty seconds. The time was the time — the time that I recorded in the notebook alongside the date and the weather (clear, 18°C, no wind) and the observation (legs heavy from Sangli yesterday, expected). The recording was the ritual. The ritual was the discipline. The discipline was the running's structure.

I descended. The descent was the reward — the 3.2 kilometres back to the city, the gradient now assisting rather than resisting, the legs flowing downhill with the specific ease of a body that had climbed and that was now being returned to the level, the returning being the gravity's gift.

The descent was also the thinking time — the time when the body ran automatically and the mind was free, free from the climb's demands, free to process, free to plan.

I thought about Janhavi Bhosale. I thought about her 5:41 and my 4:38 and the sixty-three seconds between us. I thought about the notebook's data — the trajectory that pointed downward, the rate that was slowing but that was still meaningful, the potential that the data suggested.

I thought about a thing that I had not thought before — a thing that the race at Sangli had produced, the race being the catalyst, the catalyst converting the observation into the thought.

The thought was: she could be useful.

Useful. The word was cold — the word was the word of a strategist, not a friend, the word that said: the girl from Mumbai could serve a purpose in my training. The purpose being: pacing. The purpose being: the training partner that I did not have.

I did not have a training partner. I trained with the programme — with Pallavi and Anagha and the middle girls — but the programme's best runners were not my pace. Pallavi's best 1,500 was 5:12 — thirty-four seconds behind me. The gap was too large for pacing — Pallavi could not push me because Pallavi could not stay with me, and the staying was the pacing's requirement.

A training partner needed to be within seconds of my pace — within ten seconds, ideally within five. A training partner needed to push me and to be pushed by me, the pushing being mutual, the mutual being the training's gift, the gift that solo running did not provide and that partner running did.

Janhavi was at 5:41. Twenty-three seconds behind Pallavi. Sixty-three seconds behind me. She was not a training partner — not yet. But the trajectory said: she was coming. The trajectory said: if the improvement continued (the if being the uncertainty, the uncertainty being the honest assessment of a process that was not guaranteed), she would approach Pallavi's pace in four to six weeks and my pace in — months. Many months. Maybe never.

But the trajectory was the thing. The trajectory was the data's direction. The data's direction was the possibility. The possibility was the thing that the notebook recorded and that the notebook's owner — me, the girl with the pen and the numbers and the cold strategic mind that assessed other runners as potential training resources — considered.

I closed the notebook. I ate breakfast — the breakfast that Aai had prepared, the breakfast being the training breakfast, the pohe with the extra peanuts and the banana and the glass of milk that was the calcium that the bones needed, the bones being the runners' infrastructure, the infrastructure that the training stressed and that the nutrition repaired.

The notebook was closed. The thought was not closed — the thought was open, the thought being: Janhavi Bhosale. 5:41. Improving. Possible training partner. Timeline: uncertain. Action: continue to watch.

Watch. The word that was the strategy. The word that sat on page seven of a Classmate notebook in a house on Bhausingji Road in Kolhapur.

Watch. And wait. And let the data accumulate.