Chennai Half Marathon Experience - December 1, 2013

I reached the starting point at 4:45 AM and met up with Ashutosh, Ravish, Rahul & Ram from RH group.  The Full Marathon was kicked off at 5:00 and after cheering Kalpana, we lined up somewhere in the middle of the crowd to start our run at 5:15. We started well on the OMR (Old Mahabalipuram Road) .. The race route (absolutely flat for the most part) took us south on OMR from the starting point, took a U turn towards north after a Kilometer or so. We were on the OMR for about 3Km. Ravish, Rahul. Ashutosh and I ran together and we all felt that the conditions were quite humid. In fact, my shirt was already soaked with sweat at 3k Point.  By the time we got on to Adayar flyover, it started raining heavily and we ran in the rain for 3 or 4km. We maintained a pace of 6.30 min/km although it felt like we were running at much faster pace due to extreme humidity.

We got onto the Marina Beach road after 8Km and it was such a beautiful experience running on it looking at the ocean for about 8km (4 km out and back).  The four of us finished 10k in 66 minutes and were doing well. At that point, I made a biggest blunder by skipping the water stop. I assume that they would make us take a U turn at 105 Km which meant that I could get some water at 11km mark on my way back. When I reached 10.5 point, I realized that the U turn was 1.5 KM away without any aid station which is very different from other events I ran this year. This also meant that I had to run for 5km without water and I was already feeling exhausted due to dehydration by then. I slowed down significantly couldn't keep up pace with Rahul and Ravish from then.  Ashutosh and I decided to pace each other and we ran the next 7 km from 12th to 19th. This was certainly the toughest part of the race.

The 10k event got kicked off at 7 AM with 8000 participants and we met most of them on Adayar flyover (at the 19th km).  At one point, it became very difficult to navigate through a sea of runners coming in the opposite direction. Once we crossed the flyover, we ran the next 2k at a decent pace and finished off strongly.  Overall,  I must say that it was the toughest I have run so far due to unfamiliar weather conditions and It was also most satisfactory for the same reason. I didn't have any expectations in terms of timing for this run, but finished pretty close to my Hyderabad's timing.  I must thank Ashutosh for sticking with me. He may have sacrificed 2 mins because of that.. We spent the rest of the day meeting friends in Chennai and celebrated the run with a hot sambar vada at Saravana Bhavan before boarding onto Shatabdi at 530 in the evening..

I must also say that the arrangements in terms of support (water, electral, bananas and biscuits) and people cheering was excellent. As we ran through Mylapore and on the Marina beach road, we were cheered by lots of residents in that area. This was very different compared to Hyderabad where there were hardly any locals on the road other than our own Cyrus & Zahver's family and my in-laws. We also had lots of volunteers from Wipro and from Chennai runners club cheer us throughout the run.

A few take learnings I took away from this run are-

 ·     Pay more attention to the route map to internalize the locations of various aid                   stations
 ·     In humid conditions, maintain a hydration rhythm of drinking a couple of sips of                water every 2 or 2.5  kms.
 ·    Carry a small water bottle with you as a back especially in humid conditions  (mumbai, chennai, auroville)

Tribute to the Telegram service retiring on the 15th of July

This morning during my mundane daily routine of catching up on the headlines in the newspaper, I ran into one particular news article that caught my attention. It is about the discontinuation of Telegram service in India. Smart phones, emails and SMS seem to have pushed the humble telegram service to a quiet corner with the BSNL deciding to discontinue the 160-year-old telegraph service from July 15.Although I have not used this service even once in the last two decades, I felt sad and felt that something that was part of my childhood is being taken away from me. A sense of panic has struck me that world is moving on and I took a trip down the memory lane.

I remember while growing up in Tenali, we would dread receiving a telegram especially in the wee hours. Most of them read  "xxxx serious start immediately", "xxxx expired on xxxxx", "father not coming on Saturday", etc. And there were others that read “BSRB interview on xxxxx in Delhi”, "Aunt arriving on Saturday via Madras Mail, please receive at station", etc. There were other kinds of messages, mostly congratulatory messages from family and friends. I remembered my visits to the telegraph office to send a message and the struggles to shorten the message without losing the context as the rates were dependent on the number of words. By the time, I turned ten or twelve, memorized their entire rate chart to Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Lucknow, etc.

Now we have come quite far from Telegrams to whatsApp messages. While the modern technologies made information accessible to people at a rapid pace, I wonder will they ever be able to match the emotions of excitement, surprise, anticipation, etc created by telegrams and postal letters.

Whatever may be the reason for discontinuing, I salute this service and the people who worked to deliver the messages from one corner of the world to the other corner with the realities of poor infrastructure.

What can we learn from Uttarakhand?

When I asked about what we could to help Uttarakhand flood victims my friend said “Frankly I think we need more of these.  This dose is too mild. In the guise of development, we have defiled the earth in the last 4-6 decade. There is nothing left to pass on to the next generation. The Ganga which was brought down to earth to redeem Sagara's 70k sons, is again forced to teach the same lessons to the 6 billion population which is bent upon destroying earth for good.”

I thought my friend was taking an extreme stand on this but then it occurred to me that there was some truth to it. I have been following this national calamity very closely for the past few days with a hope that the casualty numbers don’t become too high but at this point my worst fears are coming true.  The enormity of this calamity has left people like all of us helpless and exposed. Each time I looked at  the picture (below) published in today’s Hindu newspaper, I imagined how it could have been my mom or her co-pilgrims who were just at this site a couple of

weeks ago asking for desperate help. Another person I know was stuck for more than 5 days and described her homecoming as a rebirth! I am sure hundreds of such survivor stories will soon be heard in equal numbers along with the ones about the unlucky ones who didn’t make it.  We have faced the wrath of nature several times over in the last 4-6 decades and it is now time to act! So, some questions come to mind….

1. Who is responsible for all this?
2. Can we really blame developmental activities for such a calamity?
3. How can we prevent this from happening in the future or, at least, how can we minimize the number of causalities?

While questions 1 & 2 will be debated quite a bit in the media and in the academic circles over the next few weeks, I want to focus on the 2^nd part of question 3. Although I don’t have the first hand information on the number of people that visit the holy places in this region, statistics indicate that these numbers are of the order of 6 to 7 digits. Anyone who has visited similar pilgrimage spots elsewhere will concur with me that we just don’t have the necessary infrastructure to support these such large numbers.  It’s a catch 22 situation because development of infrastructure means felling of trees, construction of dams, roads, hotels etc which will in turn cause environmental hazards resulting in calamities such as the one we are experiencing now. 

So, can the inflow of tourists be regulated to match the capacity of the destination? There is precedence of proven models such as Manasarovar visit and Haj pilgrimage among others.  I often wonder why people visit some of the shrines such as Tirupati, Vaishnav Devi, Sabarimala multiple times!  I have examples in my own circle that make trips to these places at a regular frequency. I am neither passing a judgment nor commenting on the intent behind these visits but can one not be a good citizen and allow the first-timers to have priority?  If the honor code doesn’t work, the temple boards should put a system in place to restrict the numbers.  I am sure that this will cause some corruption and favoritism for the VVIPs of this country but it will certainly help avoid such human tragedies and protect the most precious gift that humans are bestowed with, the nature.

Nature does not guarantee that it won’t wreak such havoc again but the current event is to be taken as only warning us to be prepared for the future! When I challenged my friend who made a rather cynical comment about how we are all part of the problem, he made another profound statement -” I am part of the problem and any solution will have to first start with me. My rise is because of this flawed development model and the fall will also be due to the collapse of the same flawed structure”

Do you agree with my friend? Are you ready to be a part of the solution?

Politics of Poverty – Finally, how much does that one meal cost?

“Statistics are like bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital” - Aaron Levenstein

There has been a lot of talk over the past few weeks about the cost of one meal. The current government representatives backed by eminent economists came up with various numbers and scenarios supporting their argument (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/minister-walks-into-rs-5-rs-12-meal-row-out-to-prove-rs-20-can-feed-8-people/1148278/ ) and received severe criticism by public. It seems like the debate is still on and the people are trying to find a way to justify the Rs 12 argument.  

This morning I got an email from a good friend supporting the 12 Rs argument and that I should read the following article by Swaminathan Aiyar about the topic

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Swaminomics/entry/how-much-does-a-poor-man-s-meal-cost

So, finally how much does that one meal cost?

Let us look at the profile of an average “poor man” in this country.  The person is a male (since Swaminathan chose male, I will go with that) making 295 Rs a day and working for 25 days a month. While providing various details on how this poor man can have a good meal for Rs 12, the article forgets the following few facts-

1. Availability of work is seasonal and hence the person borrows at a high interest to cover the living expenses for the low months
2. Daily wage promised to them would never be given to them on time (and not all of it).
3. Alcoholism and infidelity are huge issues in that demographic – both cost lot of money
4. Large family and expenses related to that – school, medical expenses, etc.

A livelihood cannot be just seen as feeding yourself 2 square meals a day. The need to take care of family members, medical costs, school costs need to be considered to think of some sense of security for the future.

I grew up in the late 70’s and 80’s as a teenager in a family of 8 (grandfather, parents, sisters and I) and my dad was an honest engineer with the state govt.  I remember days where we would wait till the morning of Diwali for our dad to arrive (working in a neighboring city) so that we could buy crackers and new clothes occasionally. My dad would arrive on the morning of the festival with borrowed money from the festival advance and take us for shopping. Most of the middle class spends their earnings on the 2^nd day of the month.  I am sure most of you have similar stories to tell and the state of economically lower classes is even worse. Our driver bought rice, pulses, wheat, kerosene, etc. at a market price for 2 years because he couldn’t get a ration card due to corruption and atrocities by his local corporator.  So, as the quote above suggests, numbers don’t reveal everything.

Politicians and intellectuals should consider the spirit behind the public uproar and not worry about the actual cost of the meal as it is very context dependent. People are upset about their lives being trivialized with simple economics without considering that context. We shouldn’t look at the poor with a pair of mathematical lenses but should empathize with them instead.   Government’s brazen attempts to cover up its lack of ideas for solving the core issues is despicable and humiliating the section of people who are already hurting.  So, let us please end this debate about the final cost of the meal as no one other than the planning commission cares.  The more we dissect this issue the more we tell the poor man that we don’t understand his context. We need solutions not statistics.