Dnyaneshwar Tidke

Entering the housing colony in New Panvel, we asked for the house we wished to go to.

“ Tidke?’’ the woman said inquiringly, turning to face us from the conversation she had been having at the kitchen window of her neighbour.

“ Haan…over there, see the cycle? That door,’’ she said.

By now a big black dog had begun barking at our intrusion into the quiet environs. Two other dogs, closer by, raised an eye brow to glance at us and then went back to sleep. Reaching the door near the parked bicycle, we rang the door bell. A man dressed in track pant and T-shirt opened the door. He had the light build of a dedicated runner; his eyes seemed tired and peaceful at once. We were ushered into a frugally furnished, neatly kept room. Meet Mumbai running’s “ Don.’’

Dnyaneshwar Tidke was born in March 1974 at Malakoli village in Nanded in the Marathwada region of India’s Maharashtra state. His father Dhondiram Tidke was a farmer. Life was tough. Agriculture in these parts depended on timely rains and the monsoon had its vagaries. Dnyaneshwar studied up to the tenth standard at the village school. A generally quiet person, he was neither exceptional at studies nor was he pronouncedly into sports. Then something happened. He failed in the tenth standard. Although he cleared this hurdle in his second attempt, the failure and his subsequent ability to pass through hard work stayed engraved in his mind. When it came to his twelfth standard exams at school in Ahmedpur, Dnyaneshwar secured 96 per cent marks in physics, chemistry and mathematics, a high enough score to be admitted for chemical engineering at the Laxminarayan Institute of Technology (LIT) in Nagpur. College was his first time away from Malakoli. “ It was a different experience,’’ Dnyaneshwar said. He developed a penchant for physical activity. He frequented a gym. The college was on a hill. He used to run loops around it. Crucially he developed a craving for physical exertion and exhaustion. It was the beginning of the first half of Don’s life. Its credo – life’s problems solved by a simple solution founded in how he cleared his school exams and the physically active life that followed: if you can’t get something, then, hard work should help you get it. When you work hard you become tired. So, if you are tired it also means you did the required hard work to get what you want.

(Left) An old photo of Malakoli (Right) Dnyaneshwar (second from right) with his father Dhondiram Tidke, mother Bhivarabai and sister, Neetha (Photos: courtesy Dnyaneshwar. Photo montage: Shyam G Menon)

Following his BTech, Dnyaneshwar’s first job was as temporary lecturer for a year at the government polytechnic in Mumbra on the peripheries of Mumbai. Once the stint was over, he returned to Malakoli. In 2000, he got married. For the next few years he stayed put in Malakoli, in what he described as some sort of funk, the bright spot therein being a daily 10km-run with a swim thereafter in a distant village-pond. That faith in physical activity as means to find equanimity, groomed in college, was slowly evolving into a daily discipline. He would in between come from Malakoli to Kalina in Mumbai, where he stayed at a friend’s place and hunted for a job. The everyday running continued; this time it was from Kalina on the eastern edge of the city’s western suburbs, to Juhu beach on Mumbai’s west coast. Around this time, he worked for two to three months at a logistics company near the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Navi Mumbai, India’s premier container port. While there he saw the advertisement for the 2006 Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon (SCMM). He enrolled for the full marathon with no proper idea of what it entailed. Luckily even as he enrolled for the marathon with insufficient grasp of the subject, he secured his first proper job – Assistant Production Officer with Modhera Chemicals, a company in Turbhe, Navi Mumbai, manufacturing specialty chemicals for the textile industry. The family moved to rented accommodation in Panvel, Navi Mumbai. He chose Panvel both for its proximity to where he worked and also its proximity to industrial zones, just in case he was forced to seek employment afresh.

Dnyaneshwar trained for his first SCMM, sticking to his daily 10km runs. Then, prompted by the 42 km-length of the marathon and its disparity with his daily runs, he ran 35 km three days ahead of the event. In a personal madness, likely traceable to challenges in high school and the habits he picked up in college, he didn’t want to merely run, he wanted to win. On race day, he reached the starting line late. Wanting to win, he commenced running without sparing time to pin his bib. He held it in his hand instead. Half way through, he was stopped by the police who mistook him to be an intruder running without the official bib. He showed his bib and continued. But no matter how hard he tried the pack leaders remained way ahead while Dnyaneshwar got progressively exhausted. He was still struggling to reach the half way mark, when he saw the leaders going in the reverse direction after the half way-turn. He noticed their pace and efficiency. Past the half way-mark, at Shivaji Park, Dnyaneshwar quit. His first SCMM was a DNF (Did Not Finish).

Dnyaneshwar

To confront the challenge of preparing for his next SCMM, he applied his longstanding credo – work harder. What he overlooked was that he was employed and working long hours. “ I used to get tired from work and then go for a run,’’ he said. This routine plus the daily running strained him. Then in a repeat of 2006, in 2007 too, just ahead of the year’s SCMM, Dnyaneshwar ran 35km to be ready for the marathon he badly wanted to do. Fortunately, he completed the race in 4:30 hours. But he found his energy dipping past the 30km-mark. He was in a trap, a vicious cycle. He didn’t want to run the half marathon; he wanted to run the full. He wanted to win and the only thing he knew to win was to work harder. The harder he worked, the more he got tired. The more he tired himself, the less he could run. In 2008, his timing at SCMM exceeded five hours. He was ill for almost a month before the run. He had none to advise him, no friends in running. Meanwhile, another problem was hot on his heels – he wasn’t eating properly. With too much running and long hours at work to somehow balance, he was ignoring food intake not to mention, nutrition. “ My thinking then was – to run a marathon well, you must run a marathon every day,’’ he said. Eventually medical complications caught up with him – among them, fall in his platelets count. Dnyaneshwar was hospitalized soon after the Mumbai marathon. To complicate matters, his elder son had been diagnosed with a heart problem.

Whatever the problems in his life, Dnyaneshwar’s recipe for cure remained the same – running. “ Exhaustion felt good. It cleared the head,’’ he said. In 2009, he missed registering for the SCMM. Although he didn’t run at the event, he stayed in training. Asked whether he consulted his doctor on how to recover, he said he resorted to self administered recovery. The hospitalization had however tempered the old blind faith in furious activity. He was being watchful. Overall across these years, a Dnyaneshwar-day went somewhat like this: wake up at 4.30AM; run till 7.30AM, leave for work at 8AM, be back home by 7PM. That was a typical day; repeat it every day. There have been atypical days too. When he commenced formal training with a coach, there were days when he got back home at 11PM before starting the crushing routine all over again. The most engagingly atypical one was this – he would run in the morning from his house in Panvel to Sanpada roughly 25km away. At a shop selling fruit juice in Sanpada, where he would have kept a change of clothes stashed, he would change and proceed to office. “ No matter what, everyday he will go for a run,’’ his wife, Surekha, said. At the 2010 SCMM, he got his first genuinely encouraging result. He finished the full marathon in 3:58, his first sub-four hours-timing.

Dnyaneshwar at the 2014 Bengaluru Marathon

Arguably, it was in 2011 that Dnyaneshwar’s life in running began to change. That year the second half of Don’s life started. Some 20 days before that year’s SCMM, while out on a practice run in Navi Mumbai, he met Praveen Kumar, a runner from Bihar. Praveen was in the city specifically to run the SCMM. He was being supervised by a coach. Dnyaneshwar talked to them and in the process got his first taste of formal, structured training for a marathon. Despite a dose of unexpected confusion in the following days for distraction (Praveen apparently went missing and was found only after the SCMM), Dnyaneshwar returned a timing of 3:21 at SCMM. He was also able to do this without any stop in between. “ I felt good,’’ he said. But through the preparation for the race and the running itself, he had aggravated a case of shin splints. Following this race, he chanced to post his timing on the website of Runners for Life. As runners took note of his timing and one runner spoke to the other, word reached Navi Mumbai Runners (NMR) of the promising runner in their midst. According to Dnyaneshwar, M.K. Srivatsan and Vignesh Eashwar of NMR put him in touch with the well known coach, Daniel Vaz, who recommended rest and icing for the shin splints. Later Dnyaneshwar joined one of Mumbai’s regular Bandra-NCPA runs and met Giles Drego, another coach. Eventually he settled for Savio Dsouza as coach, his first formal training arrangement for long distance running. As he stayed in Panvel far off from the city, he would meet his coach one day of the week and keep him posted of his activity, over phone, the remaining days. “ I learnt to give food and nutrition the required importance,’’ Dnyaneshwar said of lessons from this phase.

In August 2011, he raced under Savio’s guard for the first time at the Hyderabad marathon, returning a timing of 3:11. He placed third in the open category. It was Dnyaneshwar’s first podium finish. He got Rs 15,000 as prize money. “ It felt good,’’ he said. Then in December 2011, he ran at the Pune International Marathon completing it in 2:53, his first sub three hours-performance in the full marathon. It was also his personal best. However at the 2012 SCMM, his timing increased to 3:04. It was in part due to the congestion caused by half marathon runners as at some point their route merged with that of the full marathon.

Meanwhile a new set of problems arose. His parents had been ailing for some time. With only a younger sister for sibling and nobody to really take care of his parents in Malakoli, Dnyaneshwar moved them to Panvel. The circumstance prompted him to shift from rented premises to owned premises. To do so, he sold a portion of his land in the village and used the receipts to purchase a house. “ Amid all this, in 2012, my training suffered,’’ he said. Aside from SCMM, the only other event of note he participated in was a marathon in Mumbai’s Borivali National Park where he came first. At the 2013 SCMM, he returned a timing of 2:56, something he managed because he was allowed to run in the elite category and avoid the growing congestion of runners. Months later, in May 2013, both his parents passed away within a week of each other. In June 2013, Dnyaneshwar suffered a motorbike accident with injury to his left ankle. It forced him to rest for 2-3 months. Finding it difficult to sit still, he turned to swimming for relief. Dnyaneshwar rebounded from the accident with the Vasai-Virar marathon (3:12); the Goa half marathon (1:23), the 2014 SCMM full marathon, which he finished in 2:58, placing sixth in the amateur category and the Bangalore marathon where he placed sixth at 3:00. On the injury list, he dealt with a groin injury that year and a second motorbike accident.

Surekha and Dnyaneshwar (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Savio was national champion in the marathon from 1984 to 1988. We spoke to Savio for his assessment of Dnyaneshwar. “ When Dnyaneshwar approached me he was already clocking a timing of 3:15-3:20 hours in the marathon. I made a few changes to his workout for running such as adding speed workouts and increased distance among others. The training helped him. In the first event he participated in after he began working with me, he was able to complete the marathon in improved timing. He has the potential to improve further in terms of timing. I think he can touch 2:45-2:42 hours. He is a strong runner and works quite hard. Unfortunately he had a motorbike accident last year. After he recovered, he had to start his training all over again,’’ Savio said. Besides acquiring a sustainable running format through formal training, the other major change is that Dnyaneshwar has found friends. They gave him a nickname – Don. That’s how he is known in Mumbai’s running circles. “ I don’t know how that name came about. I suspect it is because of my pace, ‘’ he said laughing and alluding alongside to the popular Bollywood movie by that name with its famous dialogue saying it is not just hard to capture its hero, a don, it is impossible to catch him. The real highlight of 2014 was something else. A group of runners – among them a wealthy businessman – saw him run and broached the question: why not Boston? The qualifying time for Dnyaneshwar’s age group for the 2015 Boston Marathon was 3:15 and he had a finishing time at SCMM that was well within the limit.

“ I don’t have the money,’’ Don replied.

Both money and help have since arrived. When we met him on April 10, Don was set to fly to Boston on April 16 for the 2015 Boston Marathon, his passage put together by friends and well wishers in running, including that businessman. This is Dnyaneshwar’s first visit abroad. He said he had also spoken to Bhasker Desai, who ran the Boston Marathon thrice, for tips on how to prepare (for more on Bhasker Desai please visit https://shyamgopan.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/from-zanzibar-to-boston-the-bhasker-desai-story/). Most important, unlike the mad days of before when he ran hard close to race days, Dnyaneshwar was in the taper down phase of his preparation. “ For good result, systematic training is required,’’ he said, hard earned wisdom resonant in the words.

UPDATE / April 21, 2015:

According to race results available on the Boston Marathon website, Dnyaneshwar Tidke completed the full marathon in 3:00:57 hours.

He was ranked 404 among men in his age group of 40-44 years. His overall rank was 2839 and within the men’s category, 2679.

Don’s best timing to date for the full marathon is 2:53, which he achieved at the Pune International Marathon in December 2011.

The winner in Don’s age group at the 2015 Boston Marathon, Danilo Goffi of Italy, had a timing of 2:18:44, which translated to 15th place overall and 15th within the men’s category.

The top finisher overall in the men’s category, Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia, had a timing of 2:09:17. The top finisher overall in the women’s category was Caroline Rotich from Kenya at 2:24:55.

On the event’s website, as per numbers quoted under the category ` countries of citizenship represented,’  India had 19 runners enrolled of which, 18 started the race and 17, completed it. Corresponding figures for India under the category `countries of residence represented’ were 10, 9 and 8 respectively.

Altogether the 2015 edition of the event had 30,251 runners on its rolls. Of the lot, 98 per cent finished the race.

October 2015: Running the full marathon, Dnyaneshwar Tidke finished third in his age category (40-45 years) at the Sriram Properties Bengaluru Marathon 2015. His timing was 03:00:38.

(The authors Latha Venkatraman and Shyam G Menon are independent journalists based in Mumbai. The timings quoted are as provided by the interviewee. Where photo credits have not been shown, the photos have been downloaded from the Facebook page of Dnyaneshwar Tidke and used with his consent. )

Left: Bhasker Desai (Photo: Shyam G Menon) Right: Photo taken likely in 1962, showing Bhasker (far right) with his family on Pemba Island, Zanzibar. His eldest sister Sudha went to a boarding school 30 km away from home and the family had gone to see her off (Photo: by arrangement).

“ It was a medical issue that got me into running,’’ Bhasker Desai said.

March 2015. We are at a cafe at the Inorbit Mall in Malad, a Mumbai suburb.

Bhasker was born in November 1952, in the town of Wete, on Pemba Island, Zanzibar. Pemba Island is the second biggest island of the Zanzibar archipelago. The famous channel which separates the islands from the coast of Tanzania (of which Zanzibar is now a part), got its name from Pemba. The Pemba Channel is rich in marine life and is considered today one of the world’s best preserved spots for game fishing. Zanzibar, ruled in the past by Omani kings, has historically hosted a non-resident Gujarati trading community. Bhasker’s grandfather was the first from his family to settle in Zanzibar, in 1905. Bhasker studied till the fifth standard in Africa. Given the growing political unrest in the archipelago preceding its formal union with Tanzania, Bhasker’s studies post-fifth standard happened at a boarding school in Nargol, South Gujarat. He went on to do his textile engineering from IIT Delhi and worked for Bombay Dyeing and Mafatlal, both big names in the Indian textile business.

In 1994, he quit his senior position at Mafatlal to commence his own business straddling three lines – garment export to Europe, supplying linen to five star hotels and being an agent for imported high density and low density polymer powder. Bhasker’s wife, a senior executive with the Tata Group, was based in the US from 1999 to 2005. With their son also studying and later working in the US, Bhasker managed the business in Mumbai and shuttled between India and the US.

In his years at IIT Delhi, Bhasker had run the 1500m at inter-hostel competitions. He also liked playing football. However life as businessman in Mumbai was decidedly sedentary.

Bhasker’s triglycerides level exceeded 900.

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

Triglycerides are a type of fat (lipid) found in our blood stream.

The Mayo Clinic website offers an easy-to-understand explanation. When we eat our body converts any calories it doesn’t need immediately into triglycerides, stored in our fat cells. Later, hormones release triglycerides for energy between meals. If you eat more calories than you burn – especially easy calories like carbohydrates and fats – you may have high triglycerides, a condition called hypertriglyceridemia. The American Heart Association recommends that a triglycerides level of 100 milligrams per decilitre (100mg/dL) or lower may be considered as optimal. The Mayo Clinic website deems 150-199mg/dL as ` borderline high,’ 200-499mg/dL as ` high’ and 500mg/dL and over as ` very high.’ High levels of triglycerides increase the risk of heart disease. To lower triglycerides level, change in diet and lifestyle, including physical exercise, is the usual approach.

Bhasker started frequenting Mercury Gym in the Mumbai suburb of Goregaon, doing weights and running on the treadmill. Without medication, the triglycerides receded to 450. One of the gym members noticed that he ran well on the treadmill and suggested that he train for the upcoming edition of the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon (SCMM). Bhasker enrolled for the half marathon with roughly 40 days to prepare.

In 2005-2006, when high triglycerides got Bhasker thinking of exercise, the sprawling mall we were in wasn’t yet part of Malad’s landscape. It was vacant land bordering the nearby creek. That’s where Bhasker started training for the 2006 SCMM. On event day, he finished third in his age category with a timing of 1:45 hours. By the time he was thus initiated into long distance running and liking it, his triglycerides level had dropped through consistent physical activity to 200-250.

Bhasker with wife Nina and son Neeraj, Lake District, UK, 1990 (Photo: by arrangement)

Bhasker’s son Neeraj lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. Newly married, he worked as an Assistant Vice President with the Bank of America. He was also passionate about the environment and was the youngest director of a NGO called Carolinas Clean Air Coalition. Roughly seven months after Bhasker ran his first SCMM, in August 2006, Neeraj died in a road accident. With her son now no more, Bhasker’s wife Nina, moved back to Mumbai. She also secured a job in the city with the Tata Group. The family had been adding two new floors to their house in Goregaon; the construction had been temporarily stopped because their future, when Neeraj was alive and Nina was working in the US, had seemed more US-headed than India-based. With Neeraj gone, Nina lost interest in the construction. With some coaxing from Neeraj’s friends in the US, Bhasker and Nina resumed work on the house.

January 2007 and yet another SCMM, approached. Bhasker had registered for the half marathon. On January 17, Nina passed away in hospital, the result of a slip and fall she suffered while supervising work at the house under construction. Three days later, Bhasker ran the half marathon; he decided to run the race for his wife and son, finishing it in 1:47. It took Bhasker all of 2007 to come to terms with the personal loss he had suffered. “ It wasn’t that I was crying or anything. It was more that my wife and son had given me so much of a sense of direction in life. That was suddenly gone,’’ he said. There were other losses too in 2007 – his mother-in-law, his brother-in-law, his uncle’s son, they all passed away. “ It was a terrible year,’’ Bhasker said.

Bhasker running at events in Mumbai and Bengaluru (Photos: by arrangement / Photo montage: Shyam G Menon)

Once again, SCMM provided leverage for a restart. Bhasker resumed his running with another half marathon in the 2008 SCMM. He ran a half marathon in Delhi. The running calendar then wasn’t as busy as it is nowadays. There weren’t as many events. 2009 was Bhasker’s first busy year in running. It started as usual with SCMM. Then he ran a half marathon – part of an event called Tibetan Marathon – at Leh in Ladakh, the very northern part of India, tucked in the high mountains of the Karakoram and the Himalaya. In Leh, he met Ken Skea, one of the foreign runners enrolled for the race. Ken encouraged Bhasker to attempt the Boston Marathon in the US. It is the world’s oldest and best known annual marathon, one of the six World Marathon Majors (Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York City). You cannot participate unless you meet the assigned qualifying time for your age category. The qualifying time for Bhasker’s age group at the Boston Marathon was 3:45 and the then 56 year-old Bhasker hadn’t yet run a full marathon. Much work was in order.

Around this time, some other changes were happening. Born into a traditionally enterprising family that had ventured out two generations ago and made its wealth in farming, Bhasker had also put in several years working at companies and founded his own business. After the demise of his son and wife, he slowly started taking a backseat at work. The business tapered to just one line of work; his company is still supplier of linen to one of India’s biggest chain of luxury hotels. The company became more a source of income for its few employees. On his part Bhaskar did not hesitate to use his resources to help less privileged runners. Gradually the Bhasker known to Mumbai’s running circles – the man given to running, enjoying it and inspiring others by his enthusiasm for it – began taking shape.

Ken Skea and Bhasker (Photo: by arrangement)

Bhasker’s performance at the 2010 SCMM full marathon was affected by a calcareous heel spur problem. He finished in 5:05. Boston demanded 3:45, which meant he should ideally finish at some noted event in at least 3:40. Bhasker turned to Giles Drego, one of Mumbai’s leading coaches in distance running, for guidance. In September 2010, he started following the training chart Giles provided. Ken Skea also pitched in to help with a training regimen for Bhasker. In October 2010, at Ken’s suggestion, Bhasker ran the full marathon at Athens completing the course in 4:05. “ The half marathon is a journey, the full is a destination. That is the difference,’’ he said of his learning. In December he ran the full marathon at Sabarmathi (Ahmedabad), bringing down his time to 3:45. Then he registered for the March 2011 full marathon in Washington DC.

In February 2011, Bhasker decided to hike up Kilimanjaro in Africa. The group he was with was doing the normal route. Feeling fit and with upcoming major marathon events in mind, Bhasker ran between one camp and the next. But he had overlooked an important aspect. High mountains are home to sickness caused by altitude. While its onset varies from person to person and with how well a person is acclimatized on given trip, it is not to be trivialized. Acclimatization – ideally gradual acclimatization – is important. At 19,341-height, Kilimanjaro is a high peak. It is the world’s highest free standing mountain with a history of unsuspecting trekkers, moving up fast because the passage is manageable and then ending up with mountain sickness. That’s what happened to Bhasker. Eventually he reached the summit. But he was in a bad shape. After return to Mumbai, he ran the half marathon in nearby Thane. “ It was a bad run. Kilimanjaro had knocked me out,’’ Bhasker said. Now he was worried about Washington DC.

Bhasker with Bill Rodgers. To the left and right are brief autographed messages from Rodgers (Photos: by arrangement. Photo montage: Shyam G Menon)

Ahead of the run in Washington DC, Bhasker put in time at his sister’s place in California. He joined a gym and regularly ran ten kilometres. In Washington DC, he met the running legend, Bill Rodgers who is a former American record holder in the marathon and has won the Boston Marathon and the New York City Marathon four times. Bhasker waited in queue to meet him and was delighted when Bill Rodgers wrote “ Lets run forever’’ on his photo and “ Bhasker – see you in Boston,’’ on his bib. Bhasker completed the Washington DC marathon in 3:41:16. That gave him his ticket to Boston. He remembers with gratitude a young pacer for the 3:40 time-category, who encouraged him at times of struggle. “ That young man and Bill Rodgers – they made Boston happen for me. I was very happy,’’ Bhasker said. He is believed to be the first person from Mumbai in his age group, to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

According to Bhasker, though he embraced structured preparation in the early stages of his journey to the Boston Marathon, he has by and large been an unsystematic runner. “ There are the serious runners. I am the unserious runner!’’ he quipped, adding, “ I don’t advise what I am doing for others. It works for me. It needn’t work for others.’’ He claimed there was no method to his madness. There are interesting details – for example, despite podium finishes in India and participating in major events overseas, Bhasker runs quite technology-light. He straps on a watch – that’s it. It would seem a free bird-attitude amid the growing tide of gladiators. But at another level it helps lighter one’s concerns, enjoy the journey and trust a good journey to deliver a decent result as opposed to a pressing need for result deciding the quality of the journey. Is the apparent absence of method then Bhasker’s madness? He smiled, played with the question and let it slip away.

Bhasker (center) at the 2014 Boston Marathon (Photo: by arrangement)

The real Bhasker, it seemed, hovered in the space between contrasting points in his observations on running. “ On a race day I like to give my best. There is no denying that. I don’t glorify being the last runner; I don’t glorify the podium finish either,’’ he said. He also said, “ I wish people would run for the fun of it, the health and the happiness. I feel very relaxed after every race.’’ Close to a decade in running and now in his sixties, Bhasker also admitted he was beginning to appreciate the merit in systematic training. Yet he stopped short of wholeheartedly embracing the approach and the possibilities systematic training may open up. “ I will never go for the ultra marathon. That requires rigorous training. I am not ready to compromise my lifestyle for it,’’ he said.

In Mumbai, Bhasker is noted for his popularity with young runners. Austin Dsouza, 30, who works as manager at an MNC, has been running for the past two and a half years. He has known Bhasker for around two years. “ Pappy is a fierce competitor and will never give anything less than 100 per cent. At the same time he will be easy going and humorous. He will go great distances to care for us puppies, always adding zing to every occasion. People like him, who inspire others, are rare. I remember when he was asked to speak to a bunch of MBA aspirants at an institution that had partnered for a race he was the only one on the panel who made the kids laugh and believe running is fun and for everybody. He inspires people on the track and off the track. Often after a race, we have at least five runners walk up to him and thank him for being an inspiration,’’ he said. According to Austin, he and his friends call Bhasker `Pappy,’ Bhasker calls them back, `puppies.’

Bhasker’s first Boston Marathon in April 2012 was eventful. He reached the city in good shape, ready to run. On race day, Boston recorded high temperatures. Bhasker did well up to the half marathon-mark; then he cramped up. He finished with a timing of 4:20. He fainted twice and was eventually carried off for medical attention. In 2013, by when he had moved to the 60-64 years age group, Bhasker completed the Boston Marathon in 3:46. In terms of qualifying to run at Boston, he did so in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and his eligibility remains for 2015 and 2016. But having run the Boston Marathon three times, Bhasker believes it is time to move on. Between 2011 and 2013, he must have run about 15 formal marathons including much running overseas. In 2013, the tragic bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon happened 20-25 minutes after Bhasker had finished his run. That year in Boston, he was placed 205 out of 950 runners in the 60-64 years age category. Back home Bhasker has been a podium finisher on many occasions. “ Podium finishes are always in India,’’ he said illustrating how an Indian podium finish compared to runners’ performances overseas. Meanwhile continuing with his running, Bhasker ran the marathon in New York in 2013 and the one in Istanbul in 2014. He ran in Pattaya, Phuket, Philadelphia, Geneva, Lausanne (Bhasker considers Lausanne a fine marathon destination – small town, great weather, great cheering) and Kuala Lumpur. Back home he ran the much loved Vasai-Virar marathon near Mumbai and the marathon in Dholavira, Gujarat. By February 2015, Bhasker had notched up on the average 15 marathons in 15 months; in some months there were more than one. When we met Bhasker in March 2015, the next major run on his itinerary was a marathon in Utah, scheduled for June.

Bhasker Desai, March 2015, at the cafe in Malad (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

Was it three cappuccinos or four? The exact count escapes memory. It had been a long time chatting at the cafe. Somewhere along the way, Bhasker had mentioned and it was there in the journalists’ notes, a key to understanding the man and his affection for running, “ I think running makes you a better person. Running is a great way to socialize. I am a one man-family. Running has been a nice way to increase my family; have a group which connects with you.’’

Ram Venkatraman has been a runner for long. He is one of the founding members of Mumbai Road Runners (MRR) and a person who knows Bhasker well. “ Bhasker is a mindless, aimless runner in the sense that he does not run for personal glory like personal best, podium finish etc. He has the same passion for running that we all have. He is an inspiration to many. He also does his bit for underprivileged runners by helping them with shoes, accommodation and race fees without making a fuss about it. He is truly a legend in the running world of India,’’ Ram said.

(The authors, Latha Venkatraman and Shyam G Menon, are independent journalists based in Mumbai. Please note: the timings mentioned are as given by the interviewee.)