Joggers’ Park

The Joggers’ Park is one of the very good off the beat Bollywood film. It revolves around a retired judge’s morning ventures into a local joggers’ park and him getting into a strange situation of a sort of romance with a young Bollywood model cum dancer. After retirement from my government job and subsequent training for a new not to be soon coming second job, I accidentally found that the park in my neighbourhood is beautifully designed to be qualified as a joggers’ park or even a picnic spot. So I decided to use it for my morning fitness programme, though it was limited to a thirty minutes brisk walk. After all I was retired. It was another thing that strange romantic situations scared me to hell.

The park is about a kilometre from my residence, but I still decided to use my car to go there to avoid dust on the road, accumulated there daily due to numerous construction of high rises in the area, which gets sprinkled on pedestrians by the speeding cars and other vehicles. Then there are stray dogs, as elsewhere in country. And it is better to avoid them. At times the local hospitals are out of rabies vaccines, and traffic jams will delay the move to better ones. So, why to take a chance. The park has enough parking area and there is no parking or entrance fee till 7:30 AM. Thereafter an entrance fee of Rs five is imposed in order to keep beggars and other unoccupied persons away. But it is not a hindrance for couples, especially young ones to use the noon loneliness of park. Many motorcycles visible in the parking slot from late morning to early evening hours spoke of just that.

Morning walkers and joggers and others avoided entrance fee by reaching there well before 7:30 AM, so did I. Reaching there later also meant a higher sun and less effect of the morning chill, especially in non-winter seasons. The park is beautifully laid out in roughly two square kilometre area. It has two central tiled passages, one in the length and other in the width of the park.

Their crossing has a raised platform with a huge statue of Queen Laxmibai, the young queen of Jhansi, who fought gallantly against British commanded forces in 1857 revolt. It then has a rectangular inner passage, generally occupied by the morning walkers, and an un-patterned outer passage with lots of curves making it longer than what it seems used by both joggers and walkers. The four corners of the park have a kiosk area, an amphitheatre, a sitting area and a children corner. Rest of the area is neatly laid out lawns and flower arrangements and smaller statues of famous historical figure associated with social development of India. Good that the park was created few years back. Otherwise, now a day one may find parks with statues of existing political leaders and members of their community, though the Apex Court of the country has put a sort of ban on such construction.

But statues were not the reason I decided to visit the park, and I am sure that no one coming to park at least in the morning hours must be having it either. I generally took the outer passage, as it meant a two kilometre round and I did two rounds per day amidst fresh morning air and vivid gentry of the suburb.

The vivid characteristics of gentry included young and old, males and females, serious health conscious and casual and others whom one may see in society elsewhere. The only missing charm was a Bollywood actress or a model.

One could hear a lot of laughter and noises as one entered the park. Crossing the amphitheatre on the outer passage amidst many joggers and walkers on the passage, one comes across the first group exercising in a small lawn between the outer passage and park boundary. The group was there every morning without fail and belonged to a right wing religious organisation. The group did its morning prayers, fitness exercises and drill. Most of its members appeared to be fifty plus in age, with only handful in twenties or less. A child invariably came with his older relative.
Few yards ahead of them was another group practicing slightly towards the centre of the park. And they practice laughing daily early in the morning, may be as an aberration to yoga breathing exercises. Here the age bracket was further higher. Most people were sixty plus age, with few slightly less sixty people. All they do was to stand in a circle or semi-circle and laugh as loudly as they could. Naturally anyone who saw and heard them laughed a little too or some just smiled at them, so did I.

There were other groups of people performing Yoga, exercises, and other rituals. One group was of old women sitting in meditating posture near Laxmibai’s statue. They always faced rising sun. There were few family groups also where parents exercised and children played nearby.

I did my routine walk through the park bypassing the people and the groups, mostly appreciating there keenness for the morning routine in fresh air. Daily it was the same type of people, same types of groups, same types of exercises. And what wasn’t there, was the Bollywood model cum dancer. So I didn’t need to sit down on a bench expecting someone to stop by and ask me some question. And the jogger’s park visits were limited to some real good movements in fresh air and environment, for which it was really meant.

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