Eight years. It has been that long since I first tool the flight to the US. This very day. A cautious, apprehensive, yet happy (& excited) me left to the US for graduate school. A great start to many greater things.

Reading the Palace of Illusions, Jaya and the Great Indian Novel simultaneously (or rather back to back) has its own side effects. You may end of dreaming that you are Karna. And (probably) a twist, you being woken up by Kunti who decides to take you to a distant place to avert the Mahabharatha war. If only!

PS: Palace of Illusions is a book by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni on Mahabharatha from Draupadi’s perspective. Cheesy it sure can get, but it does portray a different picture of Karna. Jaya is an illustrated retelling of Mahabharatha by Devdutt Patnaik. The Great Indian Novel is by Shashi Tharoor and is a recast of Mahabharatha in the Indian political scenario.

He wanted to hear the sound of their heart beats resonating.
All he got was the sound of her anklets walking away from him.

My 0k-10k – TCS run

The rant: 

Overcoming writer’s block is hard. Even if you have a million things to say, it is indeed hard to put them in sentences with more than 140 characters in it. That’s how Twitter has spoilt me. I indeed have had a lot of life-changing developments in the last few months, but we’ll visit that another day. (No, I haven’t gotten married yet!)

The pre-release trailer:

It was in March 2012 that I took up running a little seriously, thanks to the various forms of boredom that had set in during my stay in Atlanta. I did run on a regular basis for 6 months and then stopped running. After my move back to India, while I was still in the process of settling down and forming a routine for my activities, I chanced upon the TCS 10k run.

The registration:

Taking this as the right chance to get back to running, I signed up for the run on the last day of registration. And I pushed myself a little more by signing up for the open 10k, instead of the majaa run (5.7k). I had two weeks in hand to get back to running and ensure that I finish the run in an hour and 35 minutes.

The laziness:

Easy it might seem to get back into running 4-5 days a week, but my laziness took its first step. The plan of waking up at 5:45am to go for a run around Yediyur Lake daily was as successful as RCB’s bowling attack in recent times. Well, they at least tried. I stayed back in bed only to wake up a good 90 minutes later. And the weather changes ensured that I fell sick and didn’t run for another week.

The fear:

Two days before the run, I decided to test myself by running around the Yediyur Lake. Each lap around the lake is 1km. I hoped to run 5km that day and with great difficulty I finished 6km in 45 minutes. It was indeed an achievement. I decided I was going to run 6km and then walk the rest of the distance on Sunday.

The enthusiastic kozhandhai (EnthuKondhe):

The Saturday. The D-day-1 as a lot of them put it. Like a 4th standard school kid who is excited about his first day at school with new books, school uniform and the like, I indeed was excited about my first ever big run. By ensuring that I had placed all of the important things that I needed for the run (read music playlist, a fully charged iPod and my headphones), I tried to head to sleep by 9 so that I could wake up by 5. Well, as always the love of the city does different things to you. It makes you stay up until 1am to ensure that RCB beats CSK in a reduced over match  that’s affected by the rain. With the victory-over-CSK-induced enthusiasm, I head to sleep at 1:30am.

The D-day: 

The run was to start at 7:15. I was to be there by 6:45. A few delays here and there due to traffic snarls on a Sunday morning (due to a few roads being cleared for the run). I reach the venue fine.

The start: 

Now my turn to do something. Started the run at 7:34am. Music has indeed played a huge role in my running. And in my life as well, but let’s keep that for the other blog. I had to play this song at the beginning, for it made me cry during the other day when I ran to it. Thank you A.R.Rahman for evoking every possible emotion in me, via your music.

The run:

The route was a pretty straightforward one and I kept timing myself using songs. Roughly 1-1.5 songs per km was my target. I did stop here and there for a bit, to hydrate myself and the pace was pretty steady and I’d have probably walked less than half a kilometer in the entire 10k distance.

The almost-there moment:

The last kilometer brought such an adrenaline rush to me. This was solely due to the fact that I had lasted fine until then. And this track surely helped get ahead faster than what I actually could.

The finish: 

8:44am. Never did I imagine to finish the run in the time limit provided (1:35). I finished the 10k in 1 hr 12 minutes. I am totally short of words. And am high on the fact that I completed it. I completed (successfully) what I wanted to finish.

The credits:

The facilities were absolutely wonderful and a lot of volunteers ensured that each of us runners was comfortable, hydrated, and well taken care of. Kudos to the organizing team.

The inspirers:

The motivating factors behind this run are many. But I do need to mention two people here:

As cliched as it can get, the first person is A.R.Rahman. Thanks to you, I used to stay musically caffeinated on many days earlier. Now additionally, I stay musically motivated. Thank you for making a difference my life, yet again.

The second person is @blogeswari who with her Six-pack Sundari blog ensured that I get into running last year. In addition, she constantly motivated me, ensured that I get good contacts in Bangalore for my running routine, informed me of the TCS 10k and kept sharing a lot of good music for my runs. Thank you @blogeswari! This 10k is a good start to my running routine here again!

The Playlist:

1. Kun faya kun (Rockstar)
2. Olli Olli iduppe (Aadhi)
3. Dol dol (Aayitha Ezhutthu/Yuva)
4. Hey Goodbye nanba (Aayitha Ezhutthu)
5. Kama Kama (Enakku 20 Unakku 18)
6. Minsaaram en meedhu (Run)
7. Nenje nenje (Ratchagan)
8. Keda Kari (Raavanan)
9. Theepidikka (Arindhum Ariyaamalum)
10. Pani katre (Run)
11. Konjum nilavu (Thiruda Thiruda)
12. Sambo sambo (Pudhiya Mugham)
13. Neethaane en pon vasantham (title track)
14. Bombay madras Delhi (Ratchagan) 
15. Varaha nadhi (Sangamam)

The End!

EnthuKondhe word Courtesy: @sdhrshn

2012 - In a Nutshell

I usually end up having a lot of things to say about what happened during the year. I do have many things this time as well, but will limit it so that I don’t end up ranting.

• Learnt that hardships in life do occur. They maybe prolonged, but you’ll find a way out of it somehow. It is all about hanging in there. And I think I still am hanging only. :P
• No India trip, yet again. And this year (2013) I am making a trip, no matter what. And have pani puri daily. And also masale-dose. 
• Learnt it the hard way that people aren’t required to survive/keep myself occupied in a new city. It’s only ‘me’ that’s required. (Yes, I copy-pasted it from the 2011 post). 
• Contributed greatly to the increase in revenue of AMC theaters. This meant sitting through Ek Mein Aur Ek Tu as the only member in the audience for over 45 minutes. And watching movies like Players.
• Attended concerts by Salim-Sulaiman, Sonu Nigam and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, and realized that this town has a major Bollywood-crazy crowd. A pretty late realization, that. And I got to wish Salim Merchant on his birthday :-)

PS: 2012 was the laziest year for this blog. 3 posts?? Really? Well, I had this other ‘sicrit’ blog (that I need to revive too) that had over 60 posts. Hopefully this is a better year for this blog.

PPS: I was really hoping for the world to end on Dec 21, 2012. Well whatever that means. One of the reasons was that I did not want to write this post.