Running Is An Extreme Sport In Indian Cities

Once, I was lying in my bed on the phone with a friend who had, over the past year, reinvented himself as a marathon runner in London. Revealing his sense of clarity after clocking miles each morning, at certain point in our conversation he told me about runner's mantra like a new convert talking about the power of meditation. A runner's mantra, he told me, is the sentence that keeps you moving when your lungs burn and your legs begin to feel the pain. You can say, he shared, "something simple like 'one more step', 'keep going', 'you can do hard things'."

Eventually, of course pumped with motivation, I ended the call convinced to take up what I supposed to be the most democratic sport -running. I decided to run for a month to give myself a chance to build some stamina and get in a bit of a long-overdue exercise.

It didn't take me too long to discover that running is not a walk in the park. In my city of Mumbai that hosts 28.9 million people, running is strangely an extreme sport and almost inaccessible, resource-intensive luxury unless the Marine drive promenade or Bandra-Worli Sea Link Road is close to where you live.

It's hardly a puzzle for one to know that running is a relatively easy sport to get into. Today, Indian megacities have joggers' parks and walkers' street indicating to the many enthusiastic casual walkers and joggers. But for those that can't easily access these designated low traffic zones for people on foot, moving on your own two feet seems as though an endurance trial. You not only compete with your mind to keep going, but also are competing with the unexpected hurdles (the dogs and the litter) that prefer you hurdle jump over running.

The hawker-friendly 1.8 meters wide sidewalks in residential areas- at least as per the books- hold little space for pedestrians to exercise their freedom of movement. In reality a 2022 report highlights just 22 percent of Mumbai's roads to be considered pedestrian friendly according to the city’s own climate action plan. This is despite the fact that more than half of all trips in the city begin and end on foot.

And if these are not enough to make it extremely dangerous as a runner, the city adds the car-centric infrastructures, the unwarranted road blocks in the city currently, unexpected encroachments and the never-ending season of potholes to make it a minefield for runners. But that isn't all. Apart from your knees, elbows and ankles scared to wave the white flags at any given point, your lungs will gasp for clean air. So to call the sport a democratic one, seems to be a full blown overstatement.

And yet, after a few months of running through the chaos of Mumbai, I’ve started seeing the city — and running itself — differently. Now one of the fast growing sports in the country, hundreds of running enthusiasts across various age groups and with varied fitness levels getting into cadence. The Mumbai Marathon drew around 69,000 participants in its 20th edition January last year, and a few days in Lucknow, the IPL franchise Lucknow Super Giants organised a 10 km run ahead of the T20 World Cup final, turning the city streets into a makeshift racecourse. But when you step outside to log the miles one cannot help but wonder if running is supposed to be the world’s most democratic sport, why does it still feel like an extreme one?