Running for a cause
I did not see this as it happened. But it was described to me by someone who was there. And when he told me with a voice choking, eyes moist and lips quivering, the effect on me was more profound, for I could feel firsthand the play of emotions – of a sense of duty, a sense of protection, an urgency to give to the underpreviliged what humanly is possible and sense of warmth pervading the senses, that which is a wholesome sense of happiness, that which is Joy….
It was the early evening hours of the day, the small hall was filled with people. Many of them looking fit and in the prime of their health. A confident aura around them, one that comes with people confident that they do the right things in life. As would be ones habbit, you would look at all the people around. Soon you would see some of them in the front seats. Your heart would announce its mild distress with a missed rhythm, for these people had (or would you say did not have) something in common. They missed a leg or both. They were just sitting there, stoic and defiant, willing to fight against an unkind fate.
As you look at them with more than a passing glance, one of them would turn a magnet for your eyes. A boy of 11, missing a leg, but with an expression of earnest will to have his share of life that you would involuntarily giggle.
This days was a formal event of sorts, where these special people get something to aid them lead a life just closer to normalcy. Soon it was the turn of this boy. He is helped to hop to the stage and he is presented with an artificial limb. The experts soon fit it on him and he is asked to try walking. He gets up, and takes the first few tentative steps, looking down and careful. Soon he looks up, with an expression, I find myself inadequate to explain with a language I know. He is now comfortably walking and he even breaks into a gentle run. He lets out a whoop, and he in this crowded room acts alone, suddenly in a world which looks very different for him – he is running and walking around the room oblivious to others in the room, the effort elating him. Everyone is smiling and soon people notice another girl, slightly older – the one who was helping this boy around. She was smiling widely and her eyes were shedding tears profusely and then everyone in the room felt the same – eyes brimming with tears…
Well friends – my eyes were moist and my voice was choked too, when my good friend who manages the Dream Runners Sponsored trust which donates Prosthetic Limbs to the needy described this to me.
Running is something which fills the initiated with all positive aspects and emotions. The euphoria of a well trained body propelling itself with a rhythmic beat of footsteps on multiple terrains is an ecstatic happiness we owe ourselves. However, if these steps have to be taken with sense of purpose beyond self? Well, then every stride will be more than a biomechanical achievement, it will be sensations of every breath labored as it might be, filling your being with a warmth filling, the sweat from your brow would cleanse your vision to reveal a world which is a palette of green gardens basking in the morning sunlight after a brief spell of rain…. in few words – it is wholesome happiness!
That my friends is something this group has discovered. While we run, wy don’t we also have a superior purpose – a cause? And that is the cause as to why we run – we run so that they can walk and that gives our impetus to our runs and with every baby step we take in alleviating some pain, we get a sense of fulfilment, of achievement and a sense of immense gratitude that we are given this opportunity……
Rajagopal Sastry
Dream Runners
#LetUsRunSoTheyCanWalk #RunClean #RunResponsible #SheShouldRun