Now Even Brahma Cannot Stop Me

Running a marathon is more of a mental sport than a physical sport. Anyone who can effortlessly walk for an hour, or sit in an Indian toilet for 10mins with their own thoughts, can run a marathon. The finishing time or the goal pace is the next part. Finishing a marathon is, in itself, a herculean task. The hardest part is to keep running when every inch of your body is screaming at you to stop.

I started running because I wanted to lose belly fat. By the time I realized it takes more than just running to lose it, I had become a ‘runner’. And last week, I finished my second marathon at the Tata Mumbai Marathon.

A marathon can be divided into four stages. The first 15km are the easiest. You’ve run this distance even before a busy workday. You are hydrated, caffeinated, and fresh. You start slow and cover this distance without breaking a sweat, literally. Then slowly you start losing your focus. You get caffeinated again and increase the pace.

By the 25km mark, your inner voices grow louder. They’re against you even on your D-day. Hence, you plug in your earbuds and start your running playlist. It starts with Abhijeet Dhere’s ‘Saadagi…’. You listen to both versions back to back. There’s something in them that silences your voices. The playlist later continues to NFAK, Coldplay, Eminem, Adele, and it’s almost 32km by Skyfall.

The inner voices start taking over again. The mind goes out of your control and starts thinking of failures. All the bad decisions. The what ifs. The tradeoffs. The college and jobs. The cities you wanted to move to, the countries you wanted to pursue masters in, the person you called the love of your life, the people you called home, everybody and everything. The music doesn’t help anymore, so you seek help from everyone you admire. Your classics- Camus, Socrates, Nietzsche, Napoleon, all come to help with random bits of advice. But the teachings from books, videos, and ChatGPT responses slowly fade away, and you’re back with your own thoughts.

Now it's 36th km. You start ascending on Pedder Road. It's just you and your mind. No one to carry you ahead. You must do it yourself. While the mind is about to give up, you see the Indian tricolor on the Jindal Mansion. And then you realize, you are not Sisyphus. You are not Ubermensch. You are not Napoleon. You are Arjuna. The confused body standing in the middle of Kurukshetra. The warrior who begged to give up and run away instead of facing life's battles. And Krishna? It’s your soul. The best friend, mentor, and guide who always shows the correct path and takes misery out of a man. You trained for this for 11 months, he says. You pushed your body to its limits, cancelled plans, gave up on interests, all that, to give up? You said you'd found something to pursue relentlessly, Arjuna. And now, as you're just one morning walk away, you want to give up? You have run so far, now you just need to run for so little. It's almost sunset. The battle will be over soon. Just think of the next stride and keep moving forward. I look up at the sky. It's past 9 in the morning. Nariman point on the right, Sun peeping through the narrow gaps of the short buildings from the left. The wind coming from the Arabian Sea is hot. I sip some water to cool myself down. I cut through the wind and the noise and keep pushing forward. Now, even Brahma cannot stop me from finishing this race.