Ways to Run

This is a love story. It tells of the love between teacher and pupil, sportsman and sport, man and woman. And writer and subject. Tom Alter ...

This is a love story. It tells of the love between teacher and pupil, sportsman and sport, man and woman. And writer and subject. Tom Alter delves deep into his sporting self to tell the story of Bahadur, the boy from Rajpur, near Dehra Dun, who ran simply because he loved to run, was lucky enough to meet a man and woman who, in their own way, recognised and nurtured that, unlucky enough to be in the charge of people who didn8217;t.

As a story, Alter tells a simple, though compelling, tale and in a direct, unadorned style much like his neighbour Ruskin Bond. Like Bond, he empathises with the hill people and their homespun, yet unflawed logic, their ability to see things in black and white where others get enveloped in the mist of grey. Bahadur8217;s phlegmatism 8212; he lives life through Kipling8217;s axiom about meeting with triumph and disaster, and treating both just the same 8212; is the armour that protects him, and his real-life cousins, when things go wrong.

Geography is not the only familiar territory for Alter here. The dedications to Anita Sood and Sandeep Divgikar point to his other avatar his Alter ego? as a pioneering triathlete, along with the champion swimmer and her coach.

It allowed him to see the beauty in long-distance running, the poetry in motion that sport conjures up: the choreography of a rugby line-out, the silk smoothness of Thierry Henry dancing down the wing, the pas de deux of light-heavyweight boxers. Sport offers much more 8212; including spirituality, the communion between man and his game 8212; if one looks beyond the statistics, behind the commercials.

Bahadur8217;s story has more parallels from Alter8217;s life. Sood, like Bahadur, had an inspirational coach in Divgikar, a man Sood8217;s father called her 8216;8216;third parent8217;8217;. And, like the protagonist, Sood8217;s career was hindered, and eventually ended, by politicking, self-seeking little people.

That8217;s the sad truth in The Longest Race: that everything Alter alludes to is so true in Indian sport. The breaking of Bahadur8217;s spirit 8212; by the public, the politicians, the media, his peers and seniors 8212; is played out all around us, every day. For the public at large, and that includes all of us, beauty has no purpose in itself. Ergo, Bahadur cannot be allowed to run for the joy of running, he must run to win. And he must win for us because we demand it. And because we demand it, it must happen. The politician sees a vote or two, the coach sees a promotion, the media sees an issue and they all rush to appropriate that which they don8217;t understand or even appreciate.

Suddenly Jhumru from Jharkhand is the Big Thing, his agenda becomes the national agenda, only to be dropped as suddenly when the Next Big Thing arrives.

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The book ends on a happy note with Bahadur finding himself both as a sportsman and a human being. He can do so only because in the really big race, the marathon called Life, he runs true and fair and in line with his beliefs. And that8217;s the lesson of this book. To paraphrase de Coubertin, the most important thing is not to win the race but to enjoy it so even if you don8217;t win, you8217;ve had a jolly good time.