Marathon

Several months ago, JB told me he'd be running the Mumbai Marathon. You'll come and cheer, won't you? he asked me. Sure, I said, imagining myself at the finish line shouting Go JB! as he took that final stride. I could clap and jump a bit too. The sweatiness of the inevitable post-race hug was the worst I'd have to deal with. I thought.

JB's idea of cheering was slightly different. So I'll need 500 ml of Gatorade every hour, he said, and I can't carry more than one bottle at a time. I think I'll take about 5 hours to finish the race, so you need to meet me at 4 different points during the race give me the stuff.

Um, don't they close the roads to traffic? Yeah, he said, so you'll have to find some roundabout way to get there.

So on Sunday morning JB and I left Jan's flat at 5am. JB was pumped. I on the other hand was weighed down by my backpack which had several liters of Gatorade and a couple of kilos of bananas. We got a rick easily to Ghatkopar and from there we got onto a fast train to Churchgate. I snoozed on JB's shoulder while he studied the marathon route.

The plan was to meet M at CST where the race started and then make our way to Haji Ali which was the first Gatorade point. I wasn't really sure how we were going to move around Mumbai, as the race covered quite a bit of ground but M said she had that covered.

She didn't.

I'm not going to go into details, but the highlights include wrong train, wrong stop and a railway fine which nearly escalated into an arrest when we accused plainclothes policemen of being cons trying to make a quick buck.

End result: it was three hours into the race before we got anywhere near the marathon route. JB had refused to carry his cell phone so there was no way of finding out where he was. I guessed that he'd be three fifths of the way along, but since I was really nervous about missing him I decided to add another 8 km to that and wait at the 32 km mark. (You idiot, JB said when I explained my logic to him later. You should have factored in the lack of Gatorade and subtracted 8 km.)

But anyway, there we were at the 32 km mark, sporadically clicking photos, eating an occasional banana and watching all kinds of people run by. Tall, short, mostly skinny. Trotting, walking, even hobbling. No sign of JB.

After about half an hour of waiting, I began to think that JB must have passed that point ages ago. So I began to distribute the Gatorade and bananas. One wheezing old gentleman made me jog alongside as he sipped from the bottle. But mostly people stopped, took a gulp, grabbed a banana and moved on. As more and more stragglers passed us, I became increasingly sure that fit, lithe JB had long since passed that point.

And so I told M that we should head back to the finish line because JB was probably waiting for us there. M, who had a less optimistic view of JB's progress, suggested we wait a while longer. I reluctantly agreed.

It was a hot day, we'd drunk a lot of water and M was feeling a bit uncomfortable. She told me she'd go find a place to pee and told me we'd leave right after she got back. So there I was, sitting on the kerb, when I heard a voice right behind me offering me a cup of tea.

It turned out that I was sitting right in front of a construction site, just inside of which a chai wallah had jerry-rigged a stall. He told me he'd been watching me sitting in the hot sun, offering marathoners drinks and bananas and thought that I might want a cup of tea as refreshment. Now obviously, the last thing you'd want on a muggy Mumbai morning is a cup of hot tea. But the man was so considerate, that I couldn't but accept. And one for your friend as well, he said, pouring out a second cup.

M returned five minutes later and our chai wallah proffered a cup of tea. I don't - she began, while I hissed, don't be rude, just drink it! So M, sweating slightly from her recent exertion, reluctantly began to sip the hot cup of tea. Meanwhile, I packed up my stuff and waited for her to finish so that we could say our thank yous and goodbyes.

By the craziest coincidence, JB turned up just as M took her last sip of tea. If we'd left a minute earlier, we'd have completely missed him. Limping, sweat-streaked and at least three shades darker, he was not a happy man. The energy drinks had given out after the first 10 km and there'd been limited supplies of water. And orange peels, he said bitterly, not a single orange, just orange peels all along the route.

There were explanations, recriminations and apologies, but I could see that my screw-up had really messed things up for JB. The only thing I could do to ameliorate the situation was to be with him. And so I offloaded my heavy bag to M and in my flapping pink chappals set out to do the last 10 km of the marathon with JB.

It was terribly hot and they opened the roads to traffic soon after, so instead of walking past cheering crowds, we dodged cars on JJ flyover. That long stretch on Marine Drive felt like forever. Another marathoner, feeling sorry for me, dropped his cap on my head as he jogged by. JB's legs began cramping, but he pushed on.

When we were about 200m from the finish line, JB drew his last reserves and began to run. You can't walk across the finish line, he said. At that point, I got off the track - this was JB's battle. He'd started it at 6.30 in the morning, and six and a half hours later, he completed those 42km.