When things go wrong

Things can go wrong, anytime, anywhere and in any context. We use different adjectives to identify such situations. Mainly these adjectives reflect the magnitude of the impact the situation has on us. We refer them as a mess, a blunder, screw-up and in worst cases a catastrophe. Obviously, prevention is always good. But most of the times we cannot foresee it and we are caught off-guarded.

When reaction is the only option left, how best we react to adversities is directly related to our maturity and our wisdom. Our wisdom, maturity of thoughts and past experiences, take us one level above the adverse situation, helps us establishing correlations and take appropriate actions. It brings us to familiar path and exerts confidence with in us. Mostly our action bring us fruit and if we fail, they add on to our list of experiences.

What gives that wisdom? What brings in that maturity of thought? What shall we do to gain experiences in life?

Well the answer is simple to say but difficult to execute. Close the TV, get out of house and do that what you have never done in past. You read it right, all we need to do is to come out of our self-defined cacoon and do something different from our routine lives and gain more experience in life.

The more risks we take, the more we travel through the unbeaten path,  the more we accost different situations in life, more we get used to of the unknown and gain confidence to take up unforeseen.

A soldier is subjected to bombs and firing so many times during the training when he goes to the battlefield he doesn't panic. We need not subject ourselves to bombs and gunfire to accumulate that wisdom. All we need is to make everyday a different day than yesterday.

My Father

Today I am missing my father for some reasons. I miss him very often and always wish I was with him at this moment. I wish if I could revert the time and take myself to my childhood and be pampered by him again. To walk with him holding his coerce hand, in the roads of Mukteshwar on a Sunday morning, collecting forest grass to decorate in drawing room vase. To watch him see playing tennis with his colleague and listen his thunderous laughter upon hitting the ball hard past Bhaskar uncle.

Wish I could reverse the time again!!!

Well! The need of earning my bread and butter will not allow me to realize my wishes. I am going to be here in Dubai, thinking about him, his smile, his innocence, his dark strong body etc etc…

When I think of him, first thing that I reckon is his smile. Never ever pretentious to hide his happiness he was flamboyant to show his happiness with his wide smile and thunderous laughter.

He never raised his hand on any one of us. Just a thought of disregarding his high self-respect, his innocence, honesty and the popularity of these characteristics kept us away from doing anything that goes beyond our family values.

My love marriage was a big shock to all. How can the son of Dr RC Joshi fall in love and go ahead with love marriage? What a disgrace!!! How can he do that? Well, I knew from the bottom of my heart this is temporary. In the long run they will be proud of Rashi and my choice. Now I can see the satisfaction in his eyes. He is so fond of talking to Rashi and loves pampering her.

He was a good sports man. In the small sleepy town of Mukteshwar, where anyone could fall prey of slow lifestyle, he maintained his routine of playing tennis, long walks in the forest roads, gardening and cutting fire wood on his own during winters. He did all his chores by himself when lot of his colleagues sought help from junior staff in the office. He did it all by himself, not for one, two or three years but for 33 long years consistently. His shoulders were rock solid like stone. I used to love feeling his arms, shoulders and back. He would eat 5 chapatis at a time. 5 chapatis? The thick and big one made by my mom and ghee flowing down from all sides. Well, I cannot even think of eating 3 and Rashi will never give me ghee with my food.

He had plenty of time to do his own chores. He would only watch the news at 8:30 on Doordarshan, when my mother would leave TV to cook food and that is all. Other then that, he would have never watch TV. We would call him to watch the movie only when the comedy actors would appear for 5-6 minutes. He would come running, laugh profusely watching them and leave us to watch serious or romantic part of the movie.

He has been a quite person all throughout his life. He has always done simple things in life, that gave him immense pleasure, without becoming a hurdle for anyone, neither with in the family, nor outside. Even at the age of 76 years he is what he has been 30 years ago.

I am proud of you Babu. I miss you very much.

Did you research about your shoe enough?

In April, 2009, I had just returned from my vacation in India. Little bulkier, I started running in Mamzar for my usual 11 km loop. It was my second or third run. I had not crossed even 3 kilometers, all of a sudden I felt sharp pain on my left foot.

Since then, I couldn't run or train till quite recently. I tried running several times in between, when the pain had subsided a little. But, it was temporary. The pain would resurface every time I would stress my foot. For a regular runner such a long gap is unacceptable.

As it is common with most runners, I refrain from going to doctor. At the sametime not many people trust doctors in Dubai. Specially, from my past experience I have seen a general orthopedic surgeon doesn’t understand the reason for sports injury and sports medicine practitioners are not covered by my health insurance policy.

I kept treating my foot with ice, ointments and rest. In the meantime, in my mind I was consistently analyzing my injury. Why this injury occurred at the first place? I looked at running websites for the clue. I checked on forums where people had complained about similar injuries. I found in most of the cases rest was recommended as most common remedy.

Once, while looking at http://www.runnersworld.com/, I ventured into shoe and gear section. Curiously, I entered the make of my shoe - Saucony Jazz, in the space given. The result was astonishing. I was using wrong shoe. This model is recommended for light weight runners with neutral foot. On the contrary, I am a heavy and overpronated (flat foot) runner.

This was shocking. I felt so stupid. How many times do we buy our sports shoes after researching enough about the technology and our foot type? Not many. We simply go to a sports shoe shop, may be flex the shoe a little, ask few question to the sales person who may not be trained about the foot mechanics and purchase a pair of shoe.

I further investigated and found I should wear shoes that provide stability and motion-control to overpronated runners. From there, I printed long list of shoes with stability and motion control features. I chose to stick to Saucony and Mizuno because of their cost effectiveness. Out of more than 18 shoes, the local dealer had only one model- Mizuno Wave Nexus 3. Fortunately, it had very good reviews on the website as well.

Now I have started running back again. After resting enough and with my new shoes on, I do not feel any pain. I am now good to run.

Yes, now I am looking forward to run my 4th run marathon this year. I am sure I will do better than last year, with my new shoes on.