© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
At 114, Fauja Singh died too soon. For a man who led a remarkable life, the end was abrupt, almost staccato – hit by an unidentified vehicle while crossing the road.
Fauja Singh was 100 when he became ‘the oldest man to run a marathon’ – clocking 8 hours and 11 minutes at the Toronto Marathon in 2011. Some years earlier, when he was a sprightly 95, and soon after he had finished a marathon, Fauja Singh, resplendent in a big, black turban paired with a matching satin shirt, had told a group of journalists gathered around him in Chandigarh: “Zindagi inni sohni hai ki maran nu te jee hi nahin karda (Life is so beautiful that I just don’t feel like dying).” His eyes twinkled and his face creased into a wide smile.
He ran some more, before he finally hung up his boots in 2013, when he turned 102. But Fauja Singh never gave up on life – or his shoes. He collected at least 100 pairs and much later in life, ditched his kurta-pyjama for joggers and fancy suits. “I love clothes too,” he told The Indian Express that afternoon in Chandigarh, volunteering to open his suitcase to display his collection.
Chandigarh-based writer Khushwant Singh, who wrote a 2011 biography of the marathoner, recalls that when he first met him in 2005, Fauja was wearing an electric blue suit, a tie that read “Marathoner” and a pair of shoes with “Fauja” on one and “Singh” on the other.
If Fauja first ran, it was to escape a personal tragedy. Villagers in his Beas village in Jalandhar district say Fauja was building a dhaba for his son Kuldeep when the roof collapsed and killed the youngster, the fifth of his six children. That was in August 1994, just two years after his wife, Gian Kaur, died. Devastated, Fauja lost all will to live. His youngest son Harvinder Singh remembers seeing him mourning for hours at the cremation ground. That’s when Sukhjinder, the eldest of his sons who lived in England, took him along.
In London, he went on long walks. “I had nothing to do at home. My son told me to take a bus to the local gurdwara, but I decided to walk instead,” he would recount.
A chance encounter with Harmander Singh, a marathon coach who met Fauja at a neighbourhood park just six months earlier, would lead to the 89-year-old running his first marathon in April 2000, at age 89. He ran 6 hours, 54 minutes to finish the 26-mile (41-km) run. And soon, he was famous. Adidas appointed him as its brand ambassador and his billboards appeared across London. He was also a torchbearer for the 2012 London Olympics.
Khushwant Singh says Fauja was once invited by Queen Elizabeth II, a meeting for which he was briefed extensively for two days. “They told him, ‘Don’t try to hug her, just shake her hand’,” he says.
“The best part was the affection that came my way,” Fauja told The Indian Express in an earlier interview. “Even the memsahibs would call me grandad.”
Soon, Fauja was a jet-setting marathoner, greeted aboard flights with public announcements. A British Airways crew even printed “World traveller, centurion marathoner” on his boarding pass, and Fauja beamed.
In 2011, after running nine full marathons in 11 years, he ran the London Marathon, his last when he clocked 7 hours, 49 minutes and 21 seconds. He later transitioned to the shorter 10-km category in marathons.
At the 2013 Mumbai Marathon, Fauja rubbed shoulders with actors John Abraham and Gul Panag, jogging with one and cooking pasta with the other. When a reporter asked Abraham how it felt to be with Fauja, he replied: “Ask me how it feels to be with Fauja Singh ji.”
The same year, Fauja ran in the 10-km category in the Hong Kong marathon – his last international run.
Khushwant Singh, who spent two years writing Fauja’s 2011 biography Turbaned Tornado, recalls how he interviewed the marathoner on foot in East London: “He said, ‘I can either walk or sleep.’ So walk we did”.
Khushwant says Fauja’s accomplishment as the “oldest marathoner” was not recognised by the Guinness World Records because he did not have a birth certificate to prove his age. Fauja, he says, had a British passport that showed his date of birth as April 1, 1911, while a letter from Indian government officials stated that birth records were not maintained in 1911.
Khushwant, who once travelled with Fauja to Australia, recalls how he never lost his humility or his large heart, not even when fans from the expat Sikh community thrust dollars into his palm at gurdwaras, “On the way back, he would quietly put all the money into the gurdwara’s gullak,” he says.
Khushwant says that when Nestlé asked for Fauja’s address for a sponsorship cheque, he gave the name of an Amritsar-based charity organisation.
Back home in Punjab, Fauja was courted by politicians, yet was never dazzled by authority. In 2011, in a meeting with then CM Amarinder Singh, he quipped, “Bibi Bhattal (former CM Rajinder Kaur Bhattal and Amarinder’s rival) speech badi takri dendi hai (Bhattal gives very powerful speeches).” How Amarinder took the quip isn’t part of the records.
Around three years ago, Fauja finally moved back from London to his home in Beas, where he lived with his youngest son Harvinder’s family.
“He never sat still,” says Bhanjit Kaur, Fauja’s daughter-in-law in Beas village. “From room to courtyard to street, he was always on the move.”
Once awake, he wouldn’t stop. He would start his day with a desi pinni (a ladoo made with flaxseed or dal and dry fruits), followed by a light brunch of chapati and a sabzi. He loved ghiya (bottle gourd), tinda (apple gourd), and was “crazy about mangoes. Even till the end, he would eat a kilo a day,” smiles Bhanjit. The trees in the family compound bore fruits from the seeds he once planted.
At 3 pm, he would have a cup of tea, after which he walked for hours through the village. “Jis din reh gaya, ussi din baith jaunga (The day I skip my walk is the day I give up),” he told The Indian Express once.
On July 14, too, he was walking. He was crossing the highway to visit a small roadside eatery named after his late son, Kuldeep Singh, when an unidentified vehicle struck him down.
