I am a self-professed walkoholic, who loves soaking in the sublime delight of speed-walking several kilometers on shady side-walks. I trot, canter or gallop, depending upon the space availability on the walkways. My walking mania isn’t without rich dividends. Besides the usual health benefits, I’m still able to wear a few dresses donned during college days!
However, just as any challenging activity has its share of hurdles, even here, there are hindrances to your walking zest. Actually, I call them ‘the eyesores on footpath’; some of which are veritable visual-pollution. What reigns supreme on this eyesore-list is the sight of men piddling, unmindfully and unabashedly, letting the gut-wrenching rivulets flow all around the sidewalk. Well, if you were skilled at kho-kho during school days, your ability to skirt those stink-fraught streams, surely would come handy here.
If it is not the piddle, it is the big blobs of nausea-inducing poop you find on some of the footpaths. If you are lucky, you get to see a live-demo by small street-urchins, who would be sitting on their hunkers, sans smidgen of inhibitions, when summoned by nature’s call.
Now, how can the cattle be left behind in this footpath defiling race? Yes, you spot globs of dung, too, in all geometrical designs. You wonder why the cattle had this sudden urge to drop dung exactly on the footpaths. Not to discount, the stench-emanating garbage heaps jettisoned by people living in the vicinity.
To add to these thrills, some of the sidewalks are usurped by street hucksters selling sundry wares, right from slippers to statuettes to swanky chandeliers. Even if they aren’t peddling their items, they can be seen merrily squatting engaged in serious chatter with their co-sellers. As if these aren’t enough, at some places, you have stray electric wires jutting out of the electric poles. Heaven help if they are live wires.
Also, some streets do not bear the semblance of having a sidewalk, with their side-area filled up by small hewn-stones, giving you a feel of treading on a rocky terrain! And, even if the sidewalks are laid down with those sturdy rectangular stones, they are wobbly at certain places, threatening to give way and have you sucked into their cavernous chasms.
Then there are other saboteurs to slacken your sprinting speed. They are the two-wheeler riders, who fling themselves on the footpath, to obviate their ordeal of long waits at traffic gridlocks. And when crossing the road, you find vehicles from left zooming at full pelt, even when the signal is flashing red.
Well, all these deterrents notwithstanding, I keep embarking on my dynamic walking expeditions with my eternal killer-spirit. Yes, nothing can deflate that spirit nor can anything dampen my gusto to walk.
