An almost perfect park

Soon after arriving in India, I had a realization. I had to get back into shape. A seemingly endless array of food, from crema catalana to brouchet de poulet to Hungarian fish soup, had brought nirvana to my palate, but, combined with a supply of beer and wine from almost every country in the European Union, it had also left me with a buddha-like girth.

I soon figured out after my arrival in Bangalore that cycling would be out of the question, as the streets are seemingly permanently choked with vehicles which adhere to few traffic laws, so my other option would be running.....but where? Bangalore is the hub of India's new economy, and as such is under a state of permanent construction. There are all sorts of public works projects going on, nearly all above budget and behind schedule. Dust is permanently in the air. But most problematic was that while construction is going on, there are often no sidewalks left for pedestrians.

So with cycling out of the question, and apparently no way to run, it appeared that my new life in India would be one of physical sloth.....and to compound the problem, my relatives kept feeding me generous-sized portions of delicious South-Indian food. Masala dosa, idli, bisi bele bath, rothi, chapathi, and of course, rice, rice, and more rice. It was one day over such a meal that I expressed the exercise problem to my aunt. "You know there is a park with a track just five minutes away," she told me.



The park was actually quite a nice one, by any standard. It was verdant and painstakingly manicured, with numerous flowering trees and bushes. And the track was about a quarter of a mile long, long enough for running. So I started running that morning......and then a park worker, who I had seen earlier watering the plants in the park approached me. He showed me a lock and gestured to me that the park was about to close. "Why?",I asked in English, not yet knowing this vital word in Kannada. But he didn't understand my question, or didn't know enough English to tell me the answer. I tried to ask him, once again in English, why the park would be closing at 10 o'clock in the morning. But he just repeated "closed." I started to head for the gate. "Wait," the man said, as he put his hand on my shoulder. "You run."

"It's okay," I said, "I will go." "You, run," he repeated, and gestured for me to return to the track. Never before had I been to a park where the groundsman had offered to keep the park open just for me. I felt bad that he would have to keep working just for me, but seeing that he was determined to do so, I decided to run just a few final laps. I finished and approached the groundskeeper again to thank him. He was seated on a bench in the shade. He gestured to the spot next to him and said "Sit."

He put his arm on my back and we began to talk. Shivakumar was his name. He said he had worked in the park for several years. He was a middle-aged man, about five feet tall, with graying black hair and a bushy black mustache. His skin had the dry cracked look of someone who had spent a lifetime toiling in the sun. "I half Indian," I told him in my broken Kannada. "My father is from Karnataka." He seemed to find this fact very interesting, and his face lit up with a smile as he patted me on the back.

I kept coming back to the park, and I had several more conversations with Shivakumar. Soon I figured out that the park was only open very early in the morning and very late in the evening. Later I would learn that these were the standard operating hours for all parks in India......Having parks open during the entire day might lead to slothful youth spending their wh days in parks doing nothing, my aunt explained to me. Also a friend had told me that police in Bangalore regularly question young men and women who are sitting together in the park, and ask them if they are married and if their parents know that they are in the park with a member of the opposite sex. And then there is the Indian aversion to the sun.

In Spain, which to most Europeans is a country which is synonymous with sunny warmth, people embrace the sun, spending as much time outside as possible, going for walks, to the beach, and sitting in outdoor terrazas when going to bars and restaurants. That seems a practical attitude for the Spanish to adopt, because they live in a sunny country. India is an even sunnier country, so I thought that the Indian attitude to the sun might be somewhat similar to the Spanish one. True, the Indian sun is considerably more intense, I thought, but Indians on average have darker pigmentation and are largely equipped to deal with it. But it turned out that the opposite was true. Indians in general go to great lengths to avoid the sun, and above all, to avoid getting a tan. Sun screen in Indian stores is called "anti-tan creme," and it sits on shelves next to whitening cream, a seemingly popular cosmetic product here. And when I go outside on a sunny (but not too hot) January day, my family seems to grow genuinely concerned for my well-being.

But I was concerned for my well-being too, which was why I was running. Actually I was the only one running. In mornings and evenings, the park was full of portly Indian men wearing sweatshirts and sweatpants in the 90 degree weather, and Indian women sporting colorful saris. The men would walk for five minutes and then sit down on a bench for 10 or 20 minutes and talk to each other. Apparently they believed that sweating, and not actual exercise, was the key to physical fitness. The women were actually more active, sometimes walking for as long as thirty minutes before leaving the park.



In one corner of the park, there was a blue tarp, draped from the fence bordering the park. Initially I assumed that the tarp was used to house tools for park maintenance, but one day I saw Shivakumar cooking something over a fire next to the park. "Naam mane (Our house)' he told me. For Shivakumar and the several other groundskeepers in the park, this tent was home.