Illustration: Shyam G Menon

It was weekend in Delhi.

The cafes of Khan Market were still prepping for the day.

The one we were in was quiet.

We were the day’s first customers or nearly so.

The man before me was athletic.

He had an easy smile that hid an underlying intensity, which surfaced when he spoke about his life lost to fate and circumstance till step by step it gained wings.

I pulled out my notebook; then took a sip from the cup of cappuccino.

The story commenced at Baoli in Baghpat, roughly 50km away from Delhi.

Arun was born the second of eight children – four brothers, four sisters. His father Jaswant Singh was a teacher at the government owned Central School. From class two onward, every year Arun succumbed to malaria. The annual bout of malaria would cease only when he reached his penultimate year of graduation in college. He grew up a weak child.

He was a small person, typically seated up front in class and not robust to play any games. “ My son who is now in the eighth standard weighs 40 kilos. In class nine, I weighed 26 kilos,’’ Arun said. In class nine, another defining spate of illness started. Arun got an infection of the parotid gland, a major salivary gland located between the mouth and the ear. Its cure was a daily injection repeated 90 days.

The course got over. But the infection continued. One side of the boy’s face was swollen, disfiguring his appearance. Around the time of class nine exams, he was taken to the larger hospital in Meerut. There, the doctors identified it as parotid tumour.

After the exams, he was hospitalized for surgery. The tumour was removed. Within four months the tumour returned. In the winter of class ten, a second operation was scheduled and the tumour removed for a second time. Ahead of class ten exams, the tumour returned again. After the exams, Arun had his third surgery to remove the tumour.

The family had thought of sending him for a diploma course in some trade. Arun cleared his tenth exams with decent scores and secured admission for studying commerce. His father, having moved to Delhi wished for the family to join him. But Arun’s tumour flared up for a fourth time. The boy was back to seeing doctors.

Arun Bhardwaj (Photo: courtesy Emma Rodling & Johan Wessel)

The prime cause of tension in the recurrent tumour was – all the surgeries so far and the ones to be done were close to facial nerves. A spate of extended hospitalization began. In Delhi, most of Arun’s eleventh standard days were spent hospitalized. “ I used to write to the hospital authorities seeking leave to attend important days in school,’’ he said outlining his predicament. Studies suffered. After his class eleven exams, the fourth operation to eliminate the tumour took place. This time, the incision was bigger, needing 14 stitches to close. “ The doctors said they burnt the whole area – that was the wording they used,’’ Arun said. In any case, the tumour hasn’t returned since.

By class twelve, the young man had a body weight of 37 kilos. He joined college to graduate in commerce; a three year-program in the second year of which, the last of those annual malaria bouts happened. With that, Arun’s history of being consistently sick died out.

It was in the second year of his degree course that Arun started exercising, the first dose of physical exercise for a body locked up since childhood in illness. Arun remembers those first few days of physical workout. He was so weak that he could do no more than two push-ups at a time. So he kept the sets small and slowly, determinedly cranked up the repetitions. In less than a year, he was doing impressive numbers.

Arun’s father taught geography at school. Income was limited. Tuitions can augment teacher’s salary. But who seeks tuitions for geography? It wasn’t a subject anyone sought tuitions in. To contain expense on food and to ensure supply of good quality milk, the family kept cows and buffalos. After they bought a plot of land in Ghaziabad, Arun’s family moved that side, staying there from 1989-2003. In 2003, they moved to Dwarka.

While in college, Arun got a taste of wrestling. During his Ghaziabad years, he was also associated with a training centre for wrestlers – an akhara. “ Wrestling wasn’t for me,’’ he said. However he appreciated the training. Meanwhile a dose of football resulted in a wrist injury that capped his ability to bench press. Nevertheless these were the turnaround years. “ Since 1988, I haven’t been sick in a significant way,’’ Arun said.

In June 1992, Arun joined the Planning Commission as a clerk. There, he got acquainted with two possibilities in sport – athletics, which featured in the inter-ministry sports meet, and chess. He started running to prepare for the athletics meet, also seeing in it a potential alternative avenue for career progression. The maximum distance raced at the meet was 10,000m (10km). Arun started training with 5km runs, slowly raising it to 10km. In chess too, he prepared well, borrowing and reading books on chess from the Russian Cultural Centre. Soon, he was playing chess locally at competitive level.

At the inter-ministry athletics meet, he finished third in the 10km run. He set his eyes on the upcoming Delhi marathon. But in the run up to the event, he got injured. This was how things were in 1997 when Arun got married.

His wife Sangeeta was a school teacher posted at Rewari. Although he wasn’t running much around this time, Arun used to read about running. The couple named their first born – a daughter – Zola, after Zola Budd the famous South African middle and long distance runner. After naming his daughter, Arun wrote to the South African legend; she replied.

Arun at the George Archer Six Day Race in South Africa (Photo: courtesy Emma Rodling & Johan Wessel)

It was now noon.

The cafe had come to life.

Three men, big of purse and body discussed business at a nearby table.

Elsewhere in the cafe, youngsters talked loudly marking their presence in freedom as only those new to freedom do.

Few things express freedom as well as running does.

Little Zola (she has since been joined by siblings Sofia and Yiannis) was six months old, when the running bug bit her father again. Arun heard of talk in his village about a running race within the annual pilgrimage called Kavad Yatra or Kanwar Yatra, carrying water from the river Ganga to the Pura Mahadev temple in Baghpat. The Yatra, once restricted to a season is nowadays year round and typically features pilgrims carrying water from Gaumukh, Gangotri and Hardwar all the way back to Shiva temples in their home towns and villages. Number of devotees added up, this is one of the biggest pilgrimages in the subcontinent.

The idea of running the distance from Hardwar to Baghpat – slightly less than 180km – attracted Arun. Knowing preparation would be required he set his eyes on the June 2000 Kavad, a year away. He trained, running every weekend a half marathon from Baghpat to Ram Park in Ghaziabad. When at Rewari, he ran at the local stadium. In Delhi, during lunch time in office, he ran on Rajpath, that broad straight line of a road known nationwide as venue for the annual Republic Day parade.

June 28, 2000.

At 8AM, Arun started running from Hardwar. In his hand he held a small bottle of water from the Ganga. On his T-shirt was written ` Zola.’ He had bought a pair of used running shoes costing Rs 150, for the race. As backup, he had a pair of Goldstar shoes, made in Nepal and trusted in the hills. At hand was a new Walkman, just in case he required music to egg him on. Twenty three hours and 25 minutes after he commenced running from Hardwar, Arun stood on the first step of the Pura Mahadev temple in Baghpat. He was the fastest runner in the race. Not only that, from 33km as his previous longest run (done while training), Arun Bhardwaj had just completed his first ultra marathon.

Today Arun Bhardwaj is India’s best known ultra marathon runner.

His accomplishments since that run in the Kavad Yatra are many.

From the George Archer Six Day Race in South Africa (Photo: courtesy Emma Rodling & Johan Wessel)

In 2000, Arun had just got friendly with the new technology called Internet. After the Hardwar-Baghpat run, he searched the worldwide web to get an understanding of what 180km (approximately) in less than 24 hours meant. He found that in a 24 hour-running championship in Italy, the third placed runner had done 163km. It was the first indication of where Arun stood and what he could do.

The next year, 2001, Arun ran from Delhi to Jaipur, covering the roughly 270km-distance in a little over 33 hours. In 2002, he went to Taiwan on his first race overseas, a 24 hour-endurance run. It was the first time India was being represented at such a race. Arun ran 138.17km. Arun has since notched up several long distance runs. But a few stand out; they found mention in the story he narrated.

He ran a bunch of six day-races in Australia, Taiwan, USA, South Africa and Denmark. All of them endurance runs, he covered over the six day-period, 492km in Australia, 516km in New York and 520km in Copenhagen. He became the first Asian to complete three six day-races within the time span of a year. In 2004 he ran 501km at a six day-race in Mexico. Later in the same year he did 532.8km at another six day-race in Germany. Then he ran the first marathon of his life in Russia in blistering cold, following it up with 153km covered in the 24 hour-open championship in Russia in 2005. Same year, he did 558km at a six day-race in Australia. In 2006 he ran 521km in a seven day-race on a hilly course in Greece.

In 2010, he ran a six day-endurance race – the George Archer Six Day Race – at Hekpoort in South Africa. How it panned out tells something of Arun’s running. The course was a one kilometre loop. You ran on it for six days, resting whenever you wished but committed to an average of 67km covered per day. Else you will be disqualified. Running without support staff, a vegetarian in predominantly non vegetarian country, Arun’s cachet of food was a bag of fruits (apples, oranges and bananas) and a bottle of honey. He had also stashed in a bottle of water. As the run progressed amid rain, the Race Director, noticing Arun’s predicament in food asked what he could do. Arun sought boiled vegetables. He got that. Then, someone gave him a bottle of energy drink. All this, Arun said, would have hardly met his food requirements for six normal days. But he tapped into something within and kept running on this limited food. At the end of day one, Arun was placed second. He stayed in that position till day five, when he snatched leadership position. On day six, he maintained his lead, ran 106km that day and won the race, the first time – and so far the only time – an Indian won a multi-day race overseas.

Illustration: Shyam G Menon

In the context of Indians running ultra marathons abroad, Arun is known for completing the 2011 Badwater Ultra Marathon in the US in 41.06 hours, finishing 56th in a field of 98 runners. Badwater describes itself as the world’s toughest foot race. According to Wikipedia, its 217km-long course starts 282ft below sea level in the Badwater Basin in California’s Death Valley. It ends at an elevation of 8360ft at Whitney Portal, the trailhead to Mt Whitney. The ultra marathon takes place in mid-July when weather conditions are extreme with temperatures sometimes touching 49 degrees centigrade in the shade. Death Valley is the lowest, driest and hottest area in North America. It also lays claim to the highest air temperature in the world of 56.7 degrees centigrade, reported in July, 1913 (some meteorologists dispute the accuracy of this reading).

Within India, besides the Delhi-Jaipur run, Arun did Delhi-Chandigarh-Delhi (550km in 122.45 hours) and Delhi-Shimla (370km in 74.37 hours). His most ambitious project – completed in 2012 – was running from Kargil at the very north of India to Kanyakumari at the southern tip, via Leh. The distance of 4150km (as measured by the odometer in the support vehicle) was covered in 61 days of steady running, from October 1 to November 30. There was no day in between without running. In other words, a day of comparatively less running qualified to be rest day for this ultra runner running half marathons, marathons and more back to back. Thrice on the Delhi-Kanyakumari stretch, Arun ran over 100km per day.

His last major run before our meet-up in Delhi was a run from Delhi to Chandigarh in April 2015. He covered the distance of 254km in 49.55 hours. The maximum distance he has run so far in 24 hours is 186.4km, recorded at a 2010 event – albeit not official – in Kolkata. The same under ratified circumstances is 177.70km in 2009 in Athens. This is believed to be a South Asian record.

In most of the races (not projects like Kargil-Kanyakumari) he participated in, Arun was alone, without any support crew. His choice of races and runs also reflect passage through a variety of conditions. Between Badwater in the US, running in Russia and the Kargil-Kanyakumari run in India, he would have for example, tasted what it is like to run in hot, cold, high altitude and humid conditions.

An article in The Hindu written when Arun passed through Delhi en route to Kanyakumari, has him mentioning a run from Arunachal Pradesh to Gujarat and another along the Golden Quadrilateral among projects he would love to do. I asked Arun what his future plans are.

“ Before the age of 50, I would like to cross 500 miles in six days,’’ he said. That is 800km. Other goals on the wish list were – cross 300 miles (480km) in 72 hours; do 200 miles (320km) in two days.

From the George Archer Six Day Race in South Africa (Photo: courtesy Emma Rodling & Johan Wessel)

It had been quite a while since we left the cafe.

We walked maybe two kilometres for lunch.

Lunch had, we strolled back towards Khan Market, our pace decided by Arun’s passionate talk about running.

Although an accomplished distance runner, Arun was yet to find a major sponsor who stuck around for long. He also mentioned another challenge. When his first trip overseas came up, he had the organizers of the event in Taiwan write to the Planning Commission about the invite so that he could be officially allowed to participate. Unlike other sports including the marathon, the ultra marathon was hardly known in India. Eventually Arun’s participation was approved by the sports ministry and other agencies involved in the approval mechanism. But it was clear – nobody could grasp why the ultra marathon existed, why it was run.

In many ultra marathons, the failure rate is much higher than in the marathon because the course and course conditions are tough. Just finishing an ultra marathon is demanding. Finishing is respected. However the bulk of imagination in sports in India borrows from known themes like the world’s major sporting spectacles and the formats they indulge. Even globally, sport and disciplines in sport are seen to touch a pinnacle when they feature in staged events like the Olympics. This pattern traps our imagination; we lose our innate ability to empathize with the new and the spontaneous for want of vindication by set pattern. Thus when it comes to running, people – including officialdom – understand disciplines ranging from sprint events to the marathon. The ultra marathon puzzles. It finds no empathy. Why should there be madness beyond the marathon? Runners know why.

On one occasion – the six day-endurance run in New York – the bureaucratic delay over clearances in India bit so hard that Arun was forced to fly to New York via Moscow (the cheapest ticket he could find at that point) and reach with hours to spare for race commencement. There was no time to rest and get over the jet lag. He proceeded to run 516km over the next six days.

Arun Bhardwaj (Photo: Shyam G Menon)

In several countries, ultra runners have associations representing them and the sport.

India has none.

Given the politics sports bodies devolve to in India Arun himself has little appetite for the concept of an association. But how else will you familiarize people with the whys of ultra running? How else can officialdom be made to understand the needs of the ultra runner? “ Ultra running is a spiritual journey. You see a body running by. Actually it is spiritual,’’ Arun said. That is the ultra runner speaking and expectedly, it does not reveal to the lay person the physical strain that precedes the experience of the spiritual. Question is – will others here understand things well enough to support and encourage ultra running?

We were now at the entrance to the Khan Market metro station.

Arun walked in to catch a train home.

On the adjacent Subramania Bharti Marg, a sports car zoomed, exhausts screaming.

Everyone loves speed.

How many like the ultra? – I thought.

UPDATE: Early August 2015, Arun Bhardwaj was the winner in the 24-hour Stadium Run held at Sree Kanteerava Stadium, Bengaluru (Bangalore).

Running on the 400 meter track, Arun covered 177.2 kilometers in the assigned time, media reports said.

(The author, Shyam G Menon, is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai. Please note: the timings and records quoted in the article are as provided by the interviewee.)

Kamlya Joma Bhagat (Photo: Latha Venkatraman)

Fanaswadi was a village with two lives.

“ At the earlier location, there were no facilities. There was no doctor, no water, no electricity,’’ Kamlya Joma Bhagat said. In 2011, the village started shifting to where it is today. According to him, the old village survives, mostly abandoned except for four families who continue to be there because the elders didn’t wish to leave the land they had lived off for so long. The agricultural fields belonging to Kamlya’s family were also at the old location. He visited his former residence when required. The new and old locations of the village were apart by roughly five kilometres, separated in the main by a hill. Pale Budruk – that was the name of the area where Fanaswadi’s second avatar sprouted. When you took one of those three wheeled share-taxis from Panvel, you didn’t just say Fanaswadi; you said Fanaswadi-Valap to indicate which Fanaswadi you were talking of.

Half an hour or so from Panvel we got off on the road. Fare paid, the taxi proceeded on its way leaving us next to a board from below which a path of baked brown earth, now rendered powdery by the fierce summer of 2015, wound its way up to a rather spread out cluster of huts and mud houses. Some ways up, a wiry young man of medium height greeted us and took us to his house – all of one room and a sit-out. Behind the hut was the hill separating Fanaswadi’s two lives. Up front and far away, the hill between Kharghar and Belapur loomed, large and faint. Somewhere in that dark outline of hill was Pandavkada, the popular waterfall, right then possibly awaiting the rains to come alive. In front of that hill lay the urban sweep of Kharghar and the factories of Taloja’s industrial zone. At a tangent from the houses we were at, through the summer haze, the rocky top section of a hill was visible in the distance.

The new Fanaswadi sat unsettled on land the families on it were yet to own. They had moved here because they were desperate to be near basic amenities. Technically the land was owned by the government. Apparently there was legal action going on. There was no water and electricity here too. Observations on life were tinged by a neither here nor there vagueness; a smile and a faraway gaze to avert the impact of that uncertainty. At Kamlya’s house a metal sofa had been dressed in a clean sheet for us to sit.

We sat down to hear his story.

Meet Kamlya Bhagat, runner.

Kamlya was born in the old Fanaswadi to a family engaged in agriculture. He was the youngest of six siblings. His father died when Kamlya was still a small child. The family primarily grew rice and nachni (finger millet); they also grew vegetables. Kamlya worked on his family’s land. He also worked on other people’s land as did others in his family. Much of the farm produce at Fanaswadi was meant for use in-house. That was how life amid meagre income was managed.

Fanaswadi, new location (Photo: Latha Venkatraman)

From the age of five or six onward Kamlya attended the Aadivasi Aashram School at Chikhale near Panvel, where he studied till the tenth standard. It was a residential school where the cost of education was met by government. In class eight at this school, Kamlya had his first formal rendezvous with running. It was a 1500 metre-race, which he had to quit with 100m left due to cramps. He had run without any practice. So over the next couple of years he kept running regularly in the range of 5-15 kilometres. Kamlya attended junior college at the Sanjay Gandhi High School in Kolwadi and then joined MPAC College in Panvel to do his BA (Geography). By now the funds for his education were a mix – it came from his family; it also came from his pocket as Kamlya was additionally working at a shampoo factory in Taloja. The distances he ran had now grown to 20km.

In the second year of his three year-degree course, Kamlya secured second position in cross country running at the Mumbai University level. According to him, across his college years, he won 28 medals in disciplines ranging from 1500m to cross country running. He even ran the 4x400m relay. At MPAC College, he practised at the college ground. Sometimes he ran to college from the shampoo factory he worked at. He also ran at University Ground in South Mumbai. Representing the university, he ran at venues outside the state, in Bengaluru and Andhra Pradesh. Kamlya said he had been to four or five inter university meets. Sports elicited a toll on studies. Kamlya never gave his final year BA exam. Academically therefore, the runner from Fanaswadi stopped a shade short of graduation. There were other developments. In his second year at college, Kamlya got married. By the third year, he was a father. Today he has two children, a boy and a girl; one of them suffers from a congenital heart problem. The family also lost one child.

Kamlya, his wife Kalpana and their children, Prathama and Raj, in front of their house (Photo: Latha Venkatraman)

It was during his first year at MPAC College that Kamlya had his first taste of the half marathon. By the second year, he was enjoying the format but remained an athlete in a basket of disciplines. After leaving college Kamlya ran a half marathon, barefoot, in Kalyan. Since then, he mostly ran the half marathon. The distance was a sweet spot for him. Given his backdrop in college running a variety of distances all the way up from the 4x400m relay (he said he could do 1500m in 4:10-4:12), the half marathon allowed him to tap his innate affection for speed. Kamlya estimated that he must have run over 150 half marathons by the time we met him. That prolific running was due to another factor. When Kamlya left college, he was married and having wife and child to support. He couldn’t get a job. There was nothing available. All he had to fall back on was running. Slowly racing became a source of livelihood. These races were typically organized by individuals and organizations ranging from local legislators to elected bodies and others. They happened mostly in the winter months. A good runner, Kamlya was confident of winning races in Raigad, the district he belonged to and lived in. Running almost every week, in a good season, he was able to earn up to Rs 50,000. A modest amount, it nevertheless meant much for the family. Except rice which they grew in their fields, they needed to purchase most other things.

The races made Kamlya locally known. “ I saw his name in a local newspaper. Then I met him in one of the races in Navi Mumbai. We shared our numbers. I called him for a run and he came to Panvel an evening. That was the first time I ran with him. Later I went to his place to run. There we ran on trail. It was very beautiful,’’ Dnyaneshwar Tidke, one of the best known runners from Panvel said (for more on Dnyaneshwar please see https://shyamgopan.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/the-constant-runner/). Although he did his practice runs wearing shoes, Kamlya ran the races barefoot. “ I don’t know why,’’ he said. His runs in and around the new Fanaswadi settlement included running on the road we had come by and extended trail runs on the hill behind the hutment. As regards coaches, there was a “ Shinde sir’’ at MPAC College and a “ Sushil sir’’ at the university. No other names came up.

A seemingly self made runner for the most part, Kamlya’s Fanaswadi address was also miles away from the Mumbai locales where the city’s running coaches trained their wards. But running and runners graced Kamlya and Fanaswadi differently. News of Kamlya Bhagat got around in the running community. For instance, Chetan Gusani, a runner and photographer, was collecting shoes for needy runners when Dnyaneshwar told him of Kamlya. In June 2014, Chetan enrolled him for a 10 km race in Thane and asked Kamlya to stay at his place as it was closer to the venue. Chetan recalled the episode, “ he came over. At night I asked him if he was comfortable. He said he was very comfortable as in his own house he did not have electricity. Next morning, he ran the 10 km-race and finished second in the open category.’’ Chetan put a post on Facebook about Kamlya. Help started coming in. Fellow runners got him shoes, footed his registration fee at races. At a Fanaswadi still devoid of electricity, a line of LED lamps powered by solar energy lined the pathway to Kamlya’s house. The lamps had been provided by a group of runners.

Kamlya with his mother Sangibai (Photo: Latha Venkatraman)

As much as the half marathon emerged a sweet spot for Kamlya, it also appeared a limitation. The 28 year-old (according to Kamlya his legal age is slightly higher) fared strongly in the half marathon viewing it as a longer, stretched version of the middle distance runs he used to do before (and still does well as the outcome of the 10 km shows). At some point, Kamlya knew the same logic of adapting to age and endurance will prod him to try the full marathon. As yet he had neither attempted the full marathon in Mumbai’s annual Standard Chartered marathon (SCMM; India’s biggest such event) nor had his one attempt at the marathon, succeeded. In that latter attempt – a night marathon in Surat – he gave up after a half marathon and some more done because the run wasn’t progressing to his satisfaction. He required better endurance.

Given Kamlya’s predicament, wherein running is also a source of livelihood, satisfaction for him is probably several notches above what satisfaction is for the rest of us. He can shift disciplines only if performance is satisfactory. Further, he believes that he won’t be able to transition to the full marathon from the half without affecting his existing fortunes in the half. For example: to run the full marathon he may likely have to run slower as it spans a longer course. Do that in training several times over, how would it be if he suddenly required to a run a half marathon for money? Won’t he run slow and lose his chance to win? Not to mention: competition was emerging in Raigad. He may want the marathon but he can’t upset the income stream from the half marathon. This was Kamlya’s worry. At the same time, he knew the inner clock was ticking; he won’t stay fast forever. He hadn’t therefore shut the doors on the full marathon. “ I haven’t said no to it,’’ he emphasized. Finally there was the issue of shaking up a whole ecosystem. When we met him, Kamlya was also working as a temporary teacher at a school some distance away. Somehow the half marathon had come to fit in well in terms of the time he was able to spare for running, training and the resources he could invest in his passion, including food intake. Is it worth upsetting the equation?

Kamlya was unsure: should it be the half or the full?

“ I think he can be a full marathoner provided he trains regularly,’’ Dnyaneshwar said.

Maybe one day, like Fanaswadi before, Kamlya will step out into a second life with the full marathon.

UPDATE: At the 2015 BNP Endurathon in Mumbai, Kamlya finished second in the 25km-run. His timing was 1:45:33.

October 2015: Running the half marathon, Kamlya finished fifth in his age category (30-35 years) at the Sriram Properties Bengaluru Marathon 2015. His timing was 01:19:49.

(The authors Latha Venkatraman and Shyam G Menon are independent journalists based in Mumbai. Please note: race details, timings, performance at meets and number of medals won are as provided by the interviewee.)