Morning Walks in India

Morning Walks in Madras

        More than three decade ago, I accepted the advice of friend to consult a cardiologist.  My afternoon tiredness and weakness were attributed by friend to the weakness of my heart.  I tried to postpone the visit by pointing out that many in my office very much doubted weather I had a heart.  Those persons whose special requests I could not agree to, touted this singular diagnosis.  Finally I did visit a cardiologist.  I went through all the usual tests of echo cardiogram, tread mill, ecg, etc.  The young subaltern from medical school possibly was not fond of Doppler and declared me as one with a sound heart with no leaks or clicks.  It was a visual assessment of monitor images and possibly he might have been an addict of TV soap programmes and hence gave his final opinion without going into details of the picture.  This report was duly viewed by one of the authorities on human heart and he straightaway dictated few lines as his final diagnosis.  "Normal heart.  Let us not make a normal person a heart patient".   He must have been quite aware  of the ways of the heart and the ravages it creates for its owner and others,

But then started the trouble.  While dismissing me from his hallowed chambers stacked with heart films, tapes, papers and models of heart split open, he threatened that unless I took daily morning walks, I would not have a healthy heart.  Walking briskly for about an hour in the morning was the prescription to vouchsafe a well beating heart.  Such a simple recipe and that too from one of the top doctors who has touched so many hearts that would make a Sultan with well stacked harem suffer envy deserved strict implementation.

I started my walks in the city of Madras where I was residing then.  Those who lived in Madras more than 30 years ago would remember that taking morning walks was not a highly preferred morning avocation.  Only film actors and film actresses - now actor covers both genders - used to give interviews that their excellent physique was due to running in the Marina beach in the early hours of the morning.  Some gullible youngsters used to go to Marina for runs believing the film stars.  If only the actresses had seriously taken the morning Marina jogging, I am sure it would have given impetus to sprinters and India would have collected gold and silver in the Asian and even Olympic heats.  Anyway, walking in the morning to improve ones health was not greatly patronised by the inhabitants of Madras for very healthy reasons.  You sweat more profusely during the walks;  the roads were not broad and the streets were narrow.   Walking in the early morning was also very difficult due to lot of people sleeping here and there.  One had to go to the beach to have an unobstructed walk and sea breeze would dry your perspiration.

Luckily I was living near Besant Nagar beach and there was about a kilo meter of clean road facing the sea and the sands.  This was hundred yards from my house and I dutifully got up much before sun rise and when dawn had not even opened her eyes to have a look at what the night had done to the earth and earthlings.  I used to find to my surprise a few people were already up and out.  There were a few men, I should say not obese but quite well built, possibly trying to relive their earlier athletic youthful days by at least by taking strenuous  walks before the blazing Madras sun  could flood them with his strong rays.  There were also teenage boys and girls and those in their twenties, quite trim and slim. Some older citizens were forcing themselves to perform their walk as per doctors' advice.  A few hundred steps in the open, and breathing the morning air near the sea shore was obviously prescribed in legible words after the illegible names of the medicines to be taken morning and night to keep their hearts functioning and limbs moving.  

There was only a  small stretch of over a kilo meter of the beach with tarred road facing two dozen bungalows in those days in the Besant Nagar beach.  At both ends of this short stretch, it was not possible to walk on by persons not living in those localities.  Poverty knows no choice of  locality or any need for basic amenities.  Finding a small space of twelve feet by ten feet to raise four mud walls or three, if wall sharing was acceptable to the neighbour, and hoisting a coconut thatch roof was all that was required to make an abode.  All the space in the nice fine sand of the beach had been taken by hundreds of such hovels.  The opening out to sea a few feet away from the last line of huts served as free convenience and some times as private swimming pool.