Random Ramblings of a Reluctant Blogger

I will, any day, any time go for long walks. It helps clear all the cobwebs that cloud my mind. It helps me detoxify all the negative thoughts and just about gives a positive spin to life itself. Anytime I am under the weather, a long walk, without fail, cheers me up.

There is no particular time that I need to do it, nor do I wait for my mind to get heavy to go on a walk. I just get up and walk. But what actually puts me off the walk is when I have to do it as an exercise. Bit of a conundrum? Not really, certainly not for me.

The long walks I take come with no strings attached. I just amble and take in the sights and the sounds. Yes, in a city like Chennai, the sights and the sounds are forever fighting with the traffic. Oh and I do agree footpaths are an endangered, almost extinct species in this ‘managaram.’ And If one does, by some chance come across one, it is invariably occupied by the hawkers, or the extended shops, or a convenient space for parking. That  is if it hasn’t been dug up and the debris spread far and wide. That leaves no space except the road where you take on assorted vehicles that are definitely  out to get you. 

But for that little inconvenience, long walks are food for my soul. My eyes feast on varied hues of people, places, nameplates of shops and all kinds of hoardings small and big. I prefer ambling into lanes and smaller roads, though I am not very particular about it. Admit I am not a connoisseur of architecture, but that doesn’t stop me from endearingly looking at houses, one of the favourite things I do as I walk. Some homes are so aesthetic that I steal a second glance. At times I am not really looking at anything, because the mind is busy churning up an idea and the pace of my walk keeps in tune perfectly with it. If I am winning India a World Cup the adrenalin rush forces the pace and if it involves a moment among the mountains and a calmness the pace slackens. I do not intend, nor do I try to control the pace. I  just go with the flow building castles in the air as I do so. (No wonder I love looking at homes). I do not look at the distance, nor the clock.

I have many times gotten down from the bus two or even three stops before, just so that some idea that has been knocking at my brain gets its oxygen. And I must admit a long walk in the rain is as fulfilling as any. Yes of course in Chennai,  that’s a precarious and an equally rare exercise.

All through these walks there isn’t any compulsion of any time nor distance nor any result to be achieved. It is just a walk with ample me-time, if I may so.

And this is the exact issue with the walk in the form of exercise. The moment it is deemed an exercise, it forces in you the need to do it. The freewill is off the table. And then there is the amount of time specified and at occasionally even the speed. If these aren’t enough, these days you even have a contraption that tells you how far and many steps you have taken.

Subsequently, the moment I am forced into these ‘walkercises’ my brain soon clicks into ‘excuse’ mode. It would be just a day or two and there will be a cramp, or a small niggle in the ankle or some sneezing bout, anything to stop the torture. I tried, as someone suggested, to trick my brain suggesting that I was not on the exercise walk but just a walk, but haven’t quite achieved success. The brain knows and soon it is spinning into telling some part of my body to act up.

So much so that though the beac

h is just about three kms from the house and I have often walked to it and back, I have still not gone to the beach ‘to walk.’ The demarcation in my brain is clear: walking is fine, but exercise a strict no.

I will walk gladly, anytime any distance and for any amount of time, but no ‘walkercise’ for me. As Charles Hamilton Sorely says in his poem ‘The Song of the Ungirt Runners’, …So we run without a cause…And we run because we like it… It pretty much reflects what I feel about walking.