Last weekend before the world got a little crazier, as it often does, at far too regular intervals, there was weekend in Auroville and Pondicherry. As usual there was food, surprisingly unphotographed (may I never commit such a slight again) and pretty sights. And I ran my first ever half marathon on a lovely trail inside Auroville (also unphotographed) :o)

This weekend and the days preceding it...

I met lots of people, heard a lot of other people talk, became the proud possessor of Scientific Progress Goes "Boink", ate much decent food, attended a party of sorts I hadn’t planned to attend which though turned out to be decent enough in that my colleague and I exchanged much interesting gossip and I discovered the wonder that is vodka + energy drink, had a productive shopping / window shopping outing on Saturday, got mildly drenched in a very heavy downpour on Comm. Street, wandered over to parts of Bangalore I last visited centuries ago, and expounded my not very flattering opinion on branded women’s western wear in India to someone who works in branded western wear in India (in my defense, he asked for it!) and reaffirmed my love for all things Cotton World. And all through varied between feeling only mildly depressed about life to feeling substantially depressed about life.

The above happened because of a seminar that got me out of office for two days. It was also across industry and clients so by virtue of having been in three agencies in three cities over the span of my now glorious career (I have had flatmates who have gasped when they’ve realised when I passed out and ergo how ancient, in their myopic eyes, I am) I managed to catch up with some old friends I was really glad to meet again, some non-friends I would have been happy never meeting again, some old boss types and clients it was nice chatting to and some old boss types and clients I would have happily avoided. It was good fun in part and some of the papers were really worth listening to. But then it got all depressing towards the end when when people started talking of “industry issues” because it doesn’t really help to reiterate that there are issues and then not come up with solutions, especially when everyone knows there’s one excellent solution, but no one wants to use that, and instead they leave you feeling like a fool for sticking on in the industry.

In addition I successfully avoided a party I didn’t want to attend because of acute displeasure with some of the attendees (the number of neurotic women in this city seems to increase daily), jogged plus walked 8.4 kms, met a few more people and had mucho enlightening conversations on breathing, sprinting and my favourite topic of my ever bruised toes, had an unproductive shopping / window shopping / library outing on Sunday, and didn’t work from home all through the weekend as I had ambitiously planned to.

And now I sit, returned fresh from the pointlessness of a HR workshop and wait for the rain to stop so I an go home or for the sandwich stall guy to pick his phone so I can appease hunger pangs, whichever happens first.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who liked to run.

So she ran.

I discovered Runners for Life yesterday, the internet as ever my lifeline in times of boredom and sloth.

They facilitate running. People register with them and then every fortnight meet up at a specified location and then start running. I think they also help time you.

And I have decided to sign up, at least for one run end of this month. The route is the perimeter of the airport so works out even better since the airport is very close to where I stay.

It alarms me though that the idea of people making money by getting people together and then making them run did not initially meet with my utmost disapproval. After all, why do you need someone to remind you to run or to arrange for you to run? But you do. You need the company, if nothing to warn you when there are stray dogs in the vicinity. And it’s difficult to find company, willing to run (as opposed to walk) and willing to wake up at an obscenely early hour to do that.

Anyway, as preparation I woke a lot earlier than I usually do and did a run + walk combo for what I thought was 20 minutes but may have been less. I’m not sure about the distance covered but I know I crossed the 1 km mark.

One hopes to continue the good work over the next few days.