The day that was today..

Back at college it was almost a ritual for the last 3 years of stay to hike through the wilderness alongside the Vihar lake, reach the hilltop and see the flag hoisting at the highest point in the institute. There was a particular protocol that was followed, the Director would hoist the flag at the Gymkhana ground and without any delay some professor (usually K.D. Joshi, I admire him for a few things in spite of all the nightmares he gave the student community time and again) would hoist the flag on the hill top. Some sweets would be distributed and we would climb down, return to our hostel rooms and go to sleep.

What I really wanted to do today was to get up early and by that I mean real early, for I had ambitious plans of visiting the Red Fort and watch the tricolour flutter in all its glory and beauty. It was a dream since long. What finally happened was quite different, nonetheless quite an experience in itself. So as you might have guessed my plan flopped as I came to know quite late at night that one needs some sort of passes to be there and cameras would definitely be not allowed. I tried sleeping but my friends won't let me. After some futile attempts at studying something, I realized it was already 530 a.m and the sun was already making its way through the cracks in my window pane.

I decided I had to do something and all my creative brain could produce was the thought that I had to run. It did some calculations and told me that it was almost 1 year and 7 months since I did some very serious running (read: 21 kms in 2 hrs, 40 mins), which I love flaunting very shamelessly. Also I think it was suffering from a severe complex after seeing some pics just 2-3 years old, which I will not share here!

A Tee that needed urgent washing found some more purpose, donning which I set out. This is when a series of interesting events followed and to begin with I found that I luckily took the downward sloping road first and in no time I felt as if I was talking to the winds (I am serious, I was real fast!). Elated with the newly found vigour, I felt compelled to do the most silliest of things, things like trying to run faster than the newspaperwala riding his bicycle and sprinting at the sight of people who looked tired after a jog/walk and overtaking them. In all my excitement I outran a stupid puppy which for some reason got super kicked to see me running, kept following me only to run me into another dog which was neither so docile nor kind. Thats when I had to stop, muster some courage and bark back at him, for which it reacted by tucking its tail under its limbs (the typical dog thing), which I correctly took as a sign of submission and resumed my jog to glory. Further down, I learnt that even pets are trained to attend to their nature calls early during the day as good number of pet keepers were out, with the evidence of the act spread fresh all around. I kept running downslope for a good amount of time so much so that it felt like it would continue to remain so, something like Escher's waterfall but the final climb was quite daunting yet not daunting enough. I managed a respectable 4 kms (Rajendra Place Metro Station --> Sir Gangaram Hospital --> Karol Baag Metro Station --> Rajendra Place Metro Station) in about 25 minutes. I felt lighter and felt as if I was not climbing stairs but floating my way up to the 3rd floor.

Back home my friends were still awake. We stood up, played the National Anthem (Siachin version) on youtube. It was a very nice start to the day and having penned it down to the tune of a good number of patriotic songs, I feel I have earned myself a good sleep.

Vande Mataram!

P.S.:Call this self flattery or whatever. I just felt the immense urge for it.

P.P.S.: Don't go by the blog time stamp. This was actually written on 15th August at 0830 hrs, IST.