‘Jog’te Raho

Growth in any area is desirable, except in waistline. I think I would very soon outgrow my bathroom mirror. So alarming is the increase in my waistline. I have never ever been thin in my life. Though I prefer saying that I look healthy with enough flesh around bones, I must confess that I have always been on the chubbier side.

Then one fine day I thought, “What if my parents fail to recognize me when I go back? What if they doubt that I am someone else who had swallowed their darling son? What if they refuse to take me back? What if I am stranded at Madras Airport with nowhere to go?”. Those thoughts were powerful enough to prompt me to find out a way to reduce my waistline.

The most famous way to reduce weight is to cut down on the diet. My diet is already pretty sleek – Cereals for breakfast, a couple of cheese sandwiches for lunch, biscuits or cake in the evening and rice or parathas for dinner. I am sure I am not into gluttony. But still I manage to gain weight consistently. I will starve if I cut down on my current diet. I don’t fancy fainting at random places due to hunger. The belief that food consumption is directly proportional to one’s weight is not true. I have a few friends who gobble at anything edible, but still remain wire-thin.

That left me with the second most famous way to reduce weight – Exercise. I am no stranger to working out. I used to frequent the gym when I was in Madras. But, I used to keep away from treadmills and cycles, citing acute pain in my knees. Then I realized that the knee pain was imaginary and that I had envisaged the knee pain from the day I somewhere read an article stating that consistently heavy jogging or cycling wear down the knee joints.

Even at The Hague, I had had a short stint at the gym at Mariahoeve Sportcentrum, where I jogged and cycled. My waistline didn’t thin down as I had dreamt. Instead, the frequency and duration of my visits to the gym thinned down rapidly. Hence I dropped out. I decided to get back to jogging. Right at that period, Chellax joined us at our flat. He jogged around the neighbourhood pretty regularly. I decided to join him in his jogging routines.

When I started jogging, I found out that it is a lot tougher to jog in open space than on treadmills under roof. Outdoors have varying wind, steeps, slopes, other people, vehicles and most importantly, dogs. One evening, while jogging, I heard a dog barking. I ignored it. You know, I don’t wear my glasses while jogging. So, I concentrate more on watching the ground in front of me, to make sure that I don’t trip over something. I felt that the barking sound was rapidly approaching me. I looked around. I was startled to see a dog running ferociously towards me. Now, I am not very fond of dogs. I strongly doubt that the dogs, all of them, carry some serious grudge towards me. I have no idea why. May be I did something really really nasty to dogs in one of my previous births and they carry the hatred towards me for generations. I don’t know. But, the feeling is mutual. I believe that dogs are the secret agents of aliens.

This particular dog looked like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the dog world – huge, heavily muscled and menacing. Why do we start thinking about totally unrelated things when we are in tight situations, instead of trying to figure out how to get out of the situation? My mind was flooded with too many questions.
Is this why I came to this foreign land – to be attacked by some random animal?
Aren’t the Dutch dogs supposed to be well behaved?
Does my insurance package cover animal attacks?
Can I sue the owner of the dog?

Worst of all, the voice-inside-my-head woke up. It started lecturing, “The dogs have always been bullying around us humans. What are they? Big bullying brutes. They haven’t even learnt to walk with two limbs after all these millenniums of evolutions. Most of them still have tails and they shamelessly roam around wagging them all the time. They haven’t yet learnt a second word after ‘Woff’. The only thing they can do, which you cannot is to move the ears. And they have slightly better jaws and teeth than yours. If he is the Arnold of the dog world, you are no less. You are... hmmm... well, you are the Inder of your world. You have no reason to be afraid of him. You have suffered enough because of dogs. This is the limit. You can’t take any more. This is payback time. Put an end to their barbarities. Be a man. Mard ban. What you do to this dog should make the whole species of dogs to be scared of you, forever. Even if you die in that process, your name will be etched in the history as the martyr who liberated against the atrocities of dogs. He is used to scared humans running away from him. Take him by surprise. Attack that brute. Run towards him. BITE HIM”.

Then I heard, “Stop. Don’t move”. I was glad to obey. The dog slowed down and slowly stopped barking at me. I thought that my instincts had overruled the voice-inside-my-head and commanded me to stop. But later I learnt that Chellax, who was jogging ahead of me, had said those words. Whatever... All is well that ends well. I was glad to return to our flat instead of getting admitted in some hospital with serious dog bites.

The story didn't end there. On the way, another dog barked at us. This time it was a cute little doggie of the size of a rabbit. I was surprised at the amount of noise that little thing was able to generate. Luckily it was chained and an old lady held it tight. I didn’t have the urge to assault that doggie. Mysterious, isn’t it? May be, I tend to fight only with my equals. May be I don’t believe in confronting the weaker ones. I would love to believe this. Hahahah... ;-)

Let me get back to our main story. I continued jogging even after that chilling experience. I didn’t see the Arnold of the dog world after that day. Even then, I slowed down and look around in full alertness whenever I passed the spot where he tried to ambush me.

I asked Chellax, “How do I know that I have jogged enough for the day?”.
He said, “When you sense a slight pain at around the area of your kidney, you shall assume that you have reached your breaking point”.
I was too shy to ask him where the kidneys are situated. So, I came up with my own method to find out when I reach my endurance level. When I jog, after a point, I start hearing my own heartbeat. The sound of my heartbeat slowly increases. By the time it becomes a thunderous noise, I start feeling as though my lungs could hold no more air and would burst any time. Then I know that it is time to stop.

I jogged for a couple of weeks. Then the Daylight Saving Time ended. These days it gets dark by the time I start from office. Also, the temperature is too low, wind is too strong and rain is too frequent to continue jogging. As a natural result, I stopped jogging. I watch myself gradually moving towards obesity. I sincerely hope that my parents recognize me when I go back. Nowadays, the sweetest of my dreams are the ones where I find, to my own delight, that my own pants are too wide to fit me.