A curious lack of bonhomie

More thoughts on the Bengaluru Midnight Marathon...

About "briefing" the runners 10 seconds before the starter gun? Next time, take the trouble to mark the route efficiently so they can concentrate on the running rather than the navigation. Asking them to work out where to turn right is ridiculous, to say the least.

About the total lack of order and discipline at the starting line, the less said the better.

And should the TV camera have been right on the track as runners were coming in? Some of them had to swerve to avoid crashing into the anchor person.

The much vaunted stalls looked more like a job fair than the other, fun kind. Who wants to buy a mobile connection or magazine subscription an hour before midnight?

The Bengaluru Midnight Marathon was well attended, much publicized and has some history behind it. Yet, the event itself was a bit disconnected and disappointing. There were a million ambulances (ran into the physiotherapist who came with us on the Tour of Nilgiris), fairy lights along the route, TV cameras, spot prizes, live bands, a huge crowd drinking coffee and eating Cafe Coffee Day puff pastries, but there was no sense of "one mind, many bodies" that an event like this should have had.

People cheered loud and long at the start and finish, but the volume was not commensurate with the numbers. But I didn't stay to the end, perhaps the vibe kicked in after two in the morning. It was certainly loud enough for those who were living in the area. Which brings me to - if you're going to have a major event through the night and closing part of the road, have the courtesy to inform the local inhabitants. Just a little article in the newspaper would do. And it's very laudable to run for good causes, but if you have to park haphazardly, block exits and litter residential areas to do it, you're not achieving very much.

To those who've said to me that I should appreciate the scale instead of finding fault, I would like to say - Bangalore Habba, Vasanthhabba, Freedom Jam, every college festival, the state sports meets at Kanteerva stadium, the district sports meets in other places... others have done it and they've all done it better. All you have to do is spend some of the sponsorship money on the best professional help. Everything is not about the prize money; it's also about the experience.

(The only bit of the band I heard was a strange rendition of Roadhouse Blues but that was just as it should be - it was a peaceful, familiar feeling to stroll around my old school grounds with dubious musicians on the microphone.)

So was the winner of the marathon a perfect 10?

I've just strolled home from watching the Bengaluru Midnight Marathon. I cheered very sincerely for the half and full marathons but the good feelings disappeared in the run up to the women's race.

The tiresome debates on driving, left brain, right brain, who's a better manager, whose role is what will carry on ad nauseam as long as there's a healthy quotient of idiots of both sexes in any forum, but gender-condescension at a sporting event? That fairly takes the breath away!

I thought of many brilliant, cutting things to say on my blog while I stood there swelling with indignation and muttering angrily to my Mom who was watching too, but apart from the fact that I've forgotten most of them, only one thing really needs to be said here. Before flagging off the race, they gave away, with much fanfare, a prize for the most beautiful smile. Right there at the starting line of a marathon, to a group of runners. It was followed by a briefing that seemed to try very hard to stick to words of one syllable, but maybe I was being over-sensitive about that.

The women's race was sponsored by Cisco and if I were them, I would think very carefully about what exactly the message was that I paid large sums of money for.

I don't know if there was a Miss Photogenic prize at the end of the race because I thought it best to leave – if the woman with the mic shrieked "laydeeeze" one more time I'd have felt honour bound to kick her teeth in.

What's that song?

Why is it so hard to get over the Tour of Nilgiris? All of us who participated have other lives, work, events to go to or avoid, people to call or duck, places to be, things to do, but most of us are right now in some sort of post-TFN dream.

During our impressionable years, we’ve all been on school and college excursions, girl guide/boy scout/NCC camps, class trips. Since then, we’ve gone on voluntary versions of those with friends, family, colleagues. So that kind of group dynamic is not new to any of us, and yet there is something new and different about TFN. Attempting to work out what is like trying to list the entire discography of an artist from a half-tune that keeps playing in your head. And just as annoying.

I do know that I came back rejuvenated, almost jubilant. Parts of my mind that I thought were permanently atrophied from disuse turned out to have just been a little rusty – they got some exercise and are working fine again. I also, inexplicably, came back vindicated and hopeful. I thought it was the usual euphoria of achievement that comes after any prolonged activity but it has lasted long beyond the time that should have faded. And not just for me, judging by what others are saying.

What was so deeply influencing about those seven days? The scenery, the camaraderie, the feat? That could have been so for the cyclists – except it’s not really the cycling they seem to be talking about now – but it doesn’t explain the attachment the non-cyclists feel. What happened there to make it so special? Perhaps it should just be enough that whatever it was, happened.

A few days ago, the Facebook status of a fellow TFN alumnus read: “can’t get over TFN and it’s almost irritating me now”. That seems about right.

Don't you point that word at me

I've been going through some training material and not a single how-to article will get to the point in under three paragraphs - all of which is just the first two lines repeated in different ways. Like Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up routine, where he often cannot tell a joke and leave it at that; he has to explain it and go over it until you are desperate for someone, anyone to just step on a banana peel and end it all. (I love the Seinfeld show though.)

It's gotten so that I'll buy anything from anyone who says I'll get something else free, rather than "for free". I support the Anti Pointless Words movement, and it's going to get bitter and bloody if I have to go through anymore semi-literate drivel from those who should know better.

TFN nights: Chinna, chinna asai

It's true the Tour of Nilgiris is all about cycling, but the story's incomplete without the after-hours. On a good riding day, the evening was always effervescent.

The first one in Mysore was understandably low key, just a rest stop. By the second day, in Mercara, everyone was ready for more. That afternoon and early evening were filled with easy conversation, mostly post-mortems and story-swapping of the day's experiences. Later, it was cold enough to have a bonfire, which always helps. Though it was early to bed (we were in the middle of a sporting event, after all), and it was only a small group that remained after dinner, there was time enough for a little music and a ghost story or two. Avinash produced a flute, Vasu, Satish and our good doctor revealed singing talent in addition to the many other sterling qualities we'd already seen, and a brief power cut brought out the most brilliant stars I've seen since my camping times in Oman.

The next day was difficult, Sultan Bathery was unprepossessing and the night equally solitary and troubled. But the morning dawned bright and promising, the ride to Ooty more than made up for the previous day's shortcomings. That night was the fourth one; by then everyone had more or les found their level, made at least acquaintances so the group round the campfire was a gathering of comrades. There was much music, the volume was high and when the fire died down, the cold drove everyone in, so they crowded into the "girls' room" to continue into the small hours. I was tired and sleepy (and can sleep through an earthquake if need be) but Avinash is a rollicking storyteller with a beguiling ability to laugh at himself, so not listening was not an option.

The fifth night saw it turn into a group of friends, the entertainment enlivened further by dragging people forward to sing songs in their native languages (Kerala was conspicuously absent for once, since the two representatives that might have contributed were not present and the two that were present were not quite qualified to do so). An unexpected bonus was the Swiss farming song from George and it set me thinking that my discomfort on his behalf when we were singing Hindi songs was uncalled for – he probably didn't feel left out at all because there were so many degrees of fluency present in the room that translation was constantly being demanded by someone or the other. It was one of those times that made you sentimental about the diversity of the country and what it could be like in an ideal world.

There were two flutes that night, Murali having produced one that morning and entrusted it to my reluctant care (foster-parenting the delicate musical instrument of a serious musician is a lot of responsibility). Diksha turned out to be one hell of a singer as well, so the overall quality of the group singing was higher than is usual in the circumstances and it mercifully never had to come down to Antakshari. A formidable amount of talent was displayed that evening, but for me the most memorable part was Sourabh's own composition. Both words and music were his own, a sweet, lilting song about not being able to bring himself to tell someone he likes her, a sentiment with which every listening mind could quietly empathise.

(Epiphany: I need a thing, an act that I can trot out and hide behind. Not being able to do anything and being too awkward to attempt something impromptu makes one far more conspicuous than if one did anything stupid.)

The last evening in Mysore was prolonged a little, everyone aware of its finality. A little bit of amateur fortune-telling, a lot of laughter, a pleasing sense of schoolgirl truancy in breaking the Youth Hostel curfew, some sharing of pleasures, a few uncertain steps towards new friendships, perhaps.

The warm TFN nights fortified the relationships shaped by cycling or working together in the day, like clay in a kiln.

Chinna Chinna Asai, Roja, 1992

Day seven: Diamonds and rust

The goodbye hung over the day. It was important for the record to make that final run to Bangalore, but nobody had to like it and many didn't try very hard to. It didn't help that the Mysore-Bangalore route anyway feels more like a commute than anything else.

Many people took it easy, some choosing to stop often at wayside tea stalls for chai and a chat, hailing others as they passed. Others amused themselves for a while at the lunch stop with watermelons and Nelly's wheelies. As Virender said, "This is the difference between a tour and a race. After a race, you have no friends, you won't find anyone taking phone numbers and email addresses." (Not everyone agrees with this, though. Dickie for example, has been in races where "riders have made friends with closest rivals" and he's seen far more emotional goodbyes there.)

Our entry into Bangalore was great. We were met by a police escort at Bangalore University, where everyone stopped to get into their TFN jerseys. Many of those who did only a part of TFN joined in here for the final stretch. Though the going was slow through the city and the traffic did occasionally creep up on us, the police motorcycle did help to keep the whole group together. I was riding on a motorcycle myself today, as Modi's wingman (I really wanted to do this on the ride up to Ooty but was too late to catch either of them), so I was able to see the critical mass for the first time on the Tour.

I don't know whether the riders could have felt it, but from my vantage point on the back of the shepherd motorcycle, it was an impressive sight, with bicycles stretching all the way down the road, filling the horizon. My feelings were reflected in the faces of those who turned to watch and the occasional tourist who whipped out a camera in a hurry. This was the second awesome sight of the day. The first was when we were following what I personally think of as the pro group. They rode in formation from Channapatna to Bangalore and it was like watching racing footage on TV. Very exciting.

By the end of the victory lap around Vidhan Soudha, they had done well over 919 km. We arrived at the finish line in front of the Central Library in Cubbon Park to a chorus of cameras.

The sun is setting now as I stand on the sidewalk and watch the riders congratulate each other, cheer for their support team, make thank-you speeches and plans for rides next weekend. And so the first Tour of Nilgiris is complete, as always a little too soon, just as we're making friends and it's getting good. Well, maybe next year.

Diamonds and Rust, Joan Baez, 1975

Day six: All the roadrunning

Ooty's spirit-shrivelling cold and winter mist ensured that we only left after 9:30 in the morning. There was much testing and tinkering of gears and brakes before that. The professional racers and the veterans – Raj, Dickie, Venky, Samim, Nelly – were in even greater demand than usual. The briefings were stern and unequivocal: If you feel the slightest uncertainty, do not do the steep descent. Keep your hands on the brakes, your eyes upon the road. Keep left, very, very left. Basically, Billy, don't be a hero, just get down there the traditional way, in one piece.

Within fifteen minutes of setting out, it was amply clear why. The cycles slurped up the 36 steep and tightly winding hairpin bends like spaghetti, though it was more the road taking them than the other way round. I found out later that it was murder on the wrists and shoulders, but watching from the luxury of a jeep, the sight was thing of immense beauty. As was the scenery they whirred through. It was a magnificent route, mountains and forests stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see. We were lucky in that the traffic was unusually light for the time of the year and day. There was much to take in, here a valley falling away, there a rock shaped like a face, every so often an unexpected waterfall, promising signs saying things like "Bison View Point"… therefore there was a lot of pausing for photographs or just to stand and stare.


At the bottom, we entered a long stretch of forest, first the Madhumalai Tiger Sanctuary, then Masinagudi – scene of the next Project Tiger and the village staging the inevitable bundh in protest – and past the border into Karnataka, where it became Bandipur Wildlife Sanctuary. Later on the route, we heard that several cyclists had actually spotted interesting things like wild boars and wild elephants. My animal count was: 10 Nilgiri Langurs, 2000 normal monkeys, some marsh birds, interesting but unidentifiable (by me) tracks on a game trail and four domestic elephants being herded into a lake.

This last caused much shrill excitement in most of the passing vehicles. People tumbled out of these onto the bank, chiefly engaged in affirming very loudly that what they were looking at was in fact a group of elephants that included two babies. One of the minibuses did not even bother to switch off the very loud music. They really shouldn't be allowed on this road.

A few minutes after we'd driven on, one of the elephants decided that it had had enough and headed straight for the road to say so. People scattered, revealing Dipankar riding past with Samim, and the annoyed elephant got so close, the trunk brushed him. Luckily, they are racers in training and so were there and gone before the elephant could get down to anything.

But the rapid descent into the heat of the plains made everyone feel much like meat transferred straight from the freezer into the oven, especially in the excruciatingly ordinary (inevitable comparison) stretch from Gundlupet to Mysore. More than one sturdy rider wilted and retired from the lists for a while, choosing to cycle again a little farther along the route.

I was riding with Flaunge again, in a jeep hired in Ooty. We had a wonderful driver who not only knew and used all the traffic rules but also turned out to be a sort of wandering minstrel on the subject of local lore.

Returning to Mysore was like returning to a hometown. We were there just six days earlier, but it feels like a lifetime. We're all in bed now. A certain pall hangs over this evening, the last of the Tour, this descent one that none of us has the gear ratio to take on comfortably.

All the Roadrunning, Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, 2006

And on the fifth day, they rested

This is our day in Ooty. No formal plans have been imposed on us, we are free to do what we want. Some of us have formed small groups, some have set out in pairs, many are doing their own thing. No prizes for guessing which category I fall into. The rest day has been perfectly timed. By yesterday evening, everyone had been pushed just up to their limit and even ten minutes more would have been too much. But people who choose to cycle 919 km are not what you’d call normal, so one group has decided to take a break by running up Doddabetta. When I left the hostel, another one was talking about relaxing with a little light cycling to Pykara Lake (about 30 km). Several people had already taken energetic walks by seven in the morning (including – hold your breath – me).

Ooty is sub-zero cold, there was frost in the night. The hostel is an indifferently maintained Colonial bungalow, a grand old house full of draughts and ghosts (and cyclists, now). It is highly picturesque but not comfortable in extreme weather when the fireplaces can only be ornamental. But I like it, in spite of its inconveniences – it feels like visiting your grandparents or something equally nostalgic, a sentiment that seems all-pervasive here.

It’s there in the giant Christmas trees growing everywhere, the pines, the hill roads, the lake, the names of the places, the architecture, the roads, the weather, some of them not even consciously remembered. In my walk from Fern Hill to Charing Cross, I stopped at a café and it felt as if my book was waiting for me to return here to finish.

Yesterday, Thejesh and I went looking for tea soon after we got here and ended up climbing through a fence into an overgrown graveyard on Fern Hill because I like old churches and reading gravestones (each is a story, most of them not sad, just natural parts of the passing world). Among the ones that were not faded, were many from the time of World War I. An unexpected find was the grave of Vivekananda's stenographer, complete with an epitaph written by the great man himself.

I was persuaded to go out for yet another walk later and saw the stunning Fernhill Palace. It used to be the Mysore Maharaja’s summer retreat and may or may not be a hotel now (even the security guards seemed undecided on this point). While we wandered around the palace, we heard the Ooty train go past and the whistle sounded like a steam engine! As soon as I finish posting this, I will be rushing down to the station to take a photo of the four o’ clock train.

This morning I happened upon two other old churches, among much else, one with a million steps to collapse on, the other with a startlingly bare altar. I think they’re renovating, but for a moment when I turned my camera towards it and saw just bare wall, it seemed like the apocalypse.

Tomorrow we’re on the road again. I hope to do some of it on the Nilgiri Mountain Railway. It’s 100 years old this year, shortly to be 101. But away from the hype of the newspapers, it doesn’t even feel like the ending of the year, just as one day following another as it should.

I’ve been walking all day, with a bottle of water, an apple I found in my bag and random fruit I bought on the way. It’s been a long time since I went on a holiday on my own, so I’ve had a wonderful day.

Day four: Climb every mountain

Coffee estates gave way to tea, green hills to blue mountains and the toughest stretch of the Tour was also the most beautiful. Once in the Nilgiris, the cyclists rode past eucalyptus plantations, a wildlife reserve, stretches of picturesque water, forests of tall conifers, verges littered with pine cones. It was like entering another country. The hair-pin bends were murderous, as were most of the drivers on the road, but the road itself was excellent.

It's hard for me today to talk about the cycling and say anything I haven't said before. An impressive number made it all the way up by themselves to 7000 feet above sea level. Watching them climb today I felt personal pride in each of them that they got this far. A few of them collected some bad experiences, with people on the way booing and jeering – it’s baffling that school of thought that greets everything new or different with scorn and ridicule.

But apart from the sheer feat of cycling up, there was also the pleasure of the ride. Very few riders did not stop to smell the roses today, with even Raj defying his heart-rate monitor and jeopardising his average statistics, to take a photograph or two. Ravi, Kaushik, Francis and Avinash, to name just a few, actually took little detours into tea estates. Others took a break for a sunlit tea at a roadside shop. Matthew stopped to eat some freshly harvested carrots, maybe others did too after we passed. Nelly spent several unsuccessful minutes trying to find a way to get up to a wooden platform at the edge of the wildlife reserve. Even those of us in the cars took off down impulsive paths today. Hrish, Chetan and I went on a mini hike up to a rocky view point overlooking Madhumalai forest (we saw elephant dung on the way, but the animals themselves remained elusive).

I was with the Flaunge videographers today, seeing the Tour through their eyes. It was much the same as the other days except that we did not hand out cooling drinks to the riders. The most significant difference was that we were in a jeep hired in Sultan Bathery for the day (I suspect I was invited along to be translator). A Kerala-registered jeep taxi on a highway defies the very laws of physics and we travelled at warp speed whenever we didn’t have to slow down to film a passing cyclist. At this point in my post, everyone who knows me is expecting to hear that I was violently car sick. Well I wasn't, ever, but the effort has left me feeling as if l cycled all the way to Ooty, except without the endorphins to reward me. I've arrived here with a whole journal of new methods for dealing with car sickness but forcing the mind to prevail over body around a million intense hairpin bends has taken it out of me.

Tomorrow will be a great day looking around Ooty. Murali just asked me whether I want to check out the botanical gardens with him on a borrowed bicycle. I would have gone with pleasure, if the terror of ruining someone else's precious machine weren’t a much stronger force than all others. I have plans of my own anyway – there’s a new place to see, or at least a place to see with new eyes, and as always, I have family here, though this time they are ghosts. So I will be out bright and early to see them all.

But that’s in the future. Right now, exhaustion threatens to overwhelm, and it feels as if I've been on the road ever since I was born. The camaraderie around the bonfire tonight was wasted on me, even the extremely funny story of one cyclist falling on another due to forgetting he was wearing cleats. I retired to bed early, but from what I could hear before I fell asleep, it sounded like lot of the riders had many talents apart from being able to cycle up a mountain and most everyone had fun, probably happy in the knowledge that they have a day’s break before doing it again. I know that the thought that I don't have to get in another moving vehicle for a whole day makes me euphoric.

Climb Every Mountain, The Sound of Music, 1965

Day four: Blogger blues

I've never written like this before – with minimum time for processing, editing or proofing. Each post I write is shadowed by the knowledge that my best expression of it will come two weeks later, after it's had time to distil. My impressions each evening are too many and too raw to do justice to right away. So each day's post is a deadening feeling of not having written as well as I would have wanted to.

I'm also not quite clear on how to work this strange not-quite-marketing, not-quite-journalism, not-quite-me thing. On the one hand, my background means that. in spite of myself. I work for the benefit of the firm, rather than comment casually on it, as I would have otherwise. I make up nothing, leave out no salient facts, but I automatically arrange them for maximum enhancement of brand image, exercising marketing discretion without conscious thought. On the other hand, I get very annoyed with anyone who tells me what I should write, and the ones who are displeased or puzzled after I post. I want to say: this is my blog, my voice saying what I want it to say, I'm not bound by any rules.

But I find that I have to say that to myself too, more often than should be necessary. It doesn't matter though, since I'm more than capable of ignoring the voices in my head as well as the ones outside! Or, of course, I may be just depressed right now because my fellow blogger cycled today and made it all the way to Ooty.