After a few days of quite a miserable cough, I am beginning to feel better. I am taking no chances yet and will continue to rest until full recovery.

I have been running for close to twenty years. Not continuously as the sentence seems to imply. Although that would have been a wonderful life – another life.

Certainly in the last ten years, any rest, implying a break from running has been if I have fallen sick. Holidays, business travel, even the Covid time has given me the opportunity to carry on training, thanks to amenities like the treadmill or parks or a running track or friendly runner guides in cities like Venice. I would have never imagined that running through canal streets, squares, tiny lanes, and up and down all manner of bridges could be so wonderful. I felt that I had the whole city to myself watching the sun rise in the distant Adriatic Sea. And fortunately I have had this luck around the world, from my beloved Delhi to the savannahs in Africa.

Considering my present break from running is once again because of ill health, it is perhaps a moment for me to reflect on this instead as a state of rest. That I am at peace with this fact. That I feel that instead of missing running, I am simply not running. Running is here. Right here where it has always has been.

That genuine shift in thinking and realisation makes me feel calm and embrace this state of rest.

I was reading a note from another journal I keep. It reminded me that last year I had done insane intervals on New Year’s Day.

I wonder what’s happened this time around that I’ve picked up a cough that won’t go away easily. Is my body reacting to pollutants now? That I have been lucky these many years to manage through Delhi’s winter?

Looking ahead. Look on ahead.

I’ve decided to rest it out until the cough significantly subsides. Looking to new beginnings in 2026.

The pollution isn’t letting up. I keep hoping for the two gorgeous days – by Delhi winter standards – that we had last week.

I had no option but to get on the treadmill. Today was one of those days where I couldn’t get past forty five minutes. The prescribed run said 45-60 and I try to hit the upper limit of that number or more, but today I was just done.

Started all manner of medication for this cough that has persisted for a month.

Rest today and fatigued from yesterday’s run. Cough seems to be creeping back.

I was hoping to get to Nehru Park by or before dawn. But that was thwarted by early morning pollution.

I ended up watching early morning television and then sleeping on the couch. Dragging myself out of bed, mid morning, I made my way to Nehru Park.

It was ten straight rounds of the Niti Marg – Shanti Path loop and a bit of out and back after to finish up at thirty.

When I began, there were still some familiar runners out here who probably had the same idea as me. As the morning wore along, the park exchanged places with the morning crowd giving way to the afternoon family picnickers.

Some of us runners persisted, continuing to dodge traffic on Niti Marg, but running an extremely quiet inner lane of Shanti Path. Thus, the loop today was a parallel of two Delhi’s. The Delhi settling into Sunday fun, and the Delhi of embassies and high commissions with a few guards gossiping eyeing a lazy cricket game in the median.

When I finished, I was well and truly spent. This run had been a long time coming.

Because I switched around my interval to Friday, I jumped on the treadmill for a quick one before heading off to work.

Thinking back on my mental intervals run today with Gaju at Nehru Park, I was struck by the names of the roads around this beloved area.

Niti. Shanti. Vinay. The meanings seemed to reflect a value system that could apply to just about anything.

Today’s intervals were just crazy. They went on forever. They seemed like they would go on forever. It was as much mind as it was the body.

In these roads named for peace, principles, ethics, guidance, Gaju and I went all out, running in step with each other, pushing our limits, doing the training.

The morning was clear, the pollution was low and Nehru Park beckoned for a run.

I asked the young boy to join me for a part of it. We decided to alternate between running inside the park and the Shanti Path loop. It was a lazy Christmas morning with little traffic; lesser than a usual Sunday.

We teased each other calling names chaparganju and chintu and hilarious, mindless ribbing. Round after round went by – teasing, chatting, enjoying the late morning run, the air that was so much better, the rays of sunlight pouring through the trees.

With a couple of miles to go to get us to 15 kilometres, the young boy hazarded he had done perhaps five. I told him I would tell him the number after one more round of the Shanti Path loop. Then he second guessed wondering if it was more – I seem to be running for a long time, he said.

At the end of the loop, when I revealed that we only had a mile to go to round up to fifteen, he couldn’t believe it.

I couldn’t either. We had simply enjoyed a morning out, kept it to an easy pace and built up naturally, pace and distance, to finish the most amazing run of the year, at the most perfect park on Earth.