Sunday, April 30, 2017

A walk by Mumbai Bay

Kowshik, a close friend wanted to go walking this morning. I readily agreed. Until I heard the time. He wanted to set off from his house at 5.30 a.m. Which meant I had to leave my home at 5. Which meant, I had to wake up at 4.30. Finally with a little less enthusiasm, I agreed.


We met at 5.30 and drove down to Nariman Point, one end of the famous Mumbai landmark, the Queen's necklace. We reached at 6 a.m. and I was expecting to be greeted by a desolate walkway, with just the magical sea and a beautiful dawn for company. I got 2 of 3 right. The magical sea and the beautiful dawn. The desolate walkway I imagined, was filled with a zillion early morning walkers, joggers, gazers, ... And many of them seemed like they had been here for quite a while. We even came across several people who looked like they had spent the night here.


Sharing the space with all of them was both disappointing and invigorating. Disappointed with myself for not being as particular and inculcating fitness as part of my regular regime. Invigorating to be able to now attempt and make it part of a regular if not daily regime.

The people we shared our morning walk with seemed to be diverse with fitness being the bond. They were the young and the old. The fit and the unfit. Singles and couples. Families and friends. Just observing all of them made the walk enjoyable and fun.


An interesting phenomenon I found was that of clubs. There seemed to be several of them. That brought together its members who trained together. And then ran together. The group camaraderie made a normally tough and tiring workout easy and fun.


The most interesting group was the Yoga by the Bay. A joint initiative of the NGO I love Mumbai and Mickey Mehta, and supported by The Times of India, it was for anyone and everyone interested. There were a group of trainers who were training smaller groups of around 30 - 50. And all of them were enjoying the guidance. Most of them seemed to be newbies who were learning. And the trainers were making it simple for them.


As we were reaching the end of our walk after around 1 hour. I was amazed to see that it was just 7 am. The time at which I would normally start my day was the time I had already completed the days exercise. I guess the folks who practiced the saying "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" knew a lot more than me.


Gotta go. Time to go to bed. Early.

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