Treadmill

I have a treadmill in my bedroom. We bought it a few months ago because, as a couple, we had convinced ourselves that this was an investment our bodies would thank us for a few months down the road. As I’m typing these sentences with a lower back pain that now visits me as regularly as an unwanted elaichi in an otherwise kheer-esque skeleton, I can safely say my body isn’t thanking me. I don’t know about my wife. She still has an office to go to every morning, where she completes her quota of minimum steps required by the watch to not assume she’s dead and call the cops.

The treadmill works fine. We know this because, on the day it arrived, we unwrapped it and checked if it worked fine. Both of us ran 3 km and unanimously agreed it works fine. We were, however, left breathless and decided to let the treadmill enjoy some solitude until we were fit enough to use it again. The irony writes itself, possibly because I’m too lazy to write it.

The whole process reminded me of the air fryer we bought a year ago. We made potato wedges once and marvelled at the miracle of oil-free snacks. We haven’t had oil-free snacks since. If someone offered me 50 litres of oil in exchange for the air fryer, I would seriously consider it.

The treadmill, despite not being used for its actual purpose, has found meaning. It serves as a cloth-stand, laptop stand, lipstick-eyeliner stand (I experiment), blanket stand for when we change the sheets, but never for standing-on-it-stand. I think we would run 3 km every day if someone sent us a brand new treadmill each morning, just so we could unwrap it and check if it works. I hope that’s not asking for too much. We could even review treadmills professionally. Unfit but passionate.

I used to walk a lot. Whenever I had too much to say about situations I couldn’t control, I chose not to say it and walked instead. I walked furiously if something didn’t go my way. I walked if I fought with a teacher who cut marks for handwriting. It was maths, why does handwriting matter? I’d confront him. He’d shut me down. So I’d walk.

I used to love maths. This can be proven by one example: I once failed chemistry by a single mark, and instead of begging the chemistry teacher for a grace mark, I spent my time arguing with the maths teacher, who had cut two marks because I skipped two steps while solving a problem. A thing one often does when preparing for engineering entrances. I was fuming for not scoring full marks. I walked all the way home from school. Then once I calmed down, I returned in a rickshaw to pick up the cycle I had left behind. Then walked back home again, this time pushing the cycle. I was not a bright bulb.

I walked to vent. I walked to celebrate. I walked to distract. But I never walked just to walk. Now that I’m approaching my mid-30s, health practitioners have started recommending that I take walks. And if they tell me this in a condescending tone, I end up taking a walk, out of their office, straight to Practo, where I leave them a bad review. I imagine them furiously walking while reading it. It’s good for their health.

But yes, sometimes, I still take long walks. Sauntering, as Thoreau calls it in Walden. Long, directionless walks to break the monotony of life. I feel that with the advent of technology, we’ve lost the art of feeling lost. There are too many choices. I can become this, or that, or even the President. Perhaps Vice President, in the current context. I can take this road, or that road, or this lane, or that flyover. We have maps, examples, testimonials, videos, and blogs to check and cross-check and compare and find solace in our own mediocrity. I think the best explorers are usually the lost ones, rarely the confused ones. We, on the other hand, are mostly confused. Rarely lost. Possibly just bored.

And that is why I take these long, directionless walks without maps. To get the feeling of being lost. To make my brain work out a way on its own. To let it notice the trees as I walk into a forest. To have a rescue plan in case I do get lost. But the walk to the deep end of that forest feels important. The best things in life are always hidden. Or at least that’s what I like to believe. Every couple of years, I get bored with the current version of myself. I start despising my work, life, everything. So I look to reinvent, desperately. Like changing the layout of your living room furniture. Except the stakes are much higher. “It’s some neurosis,” my psych tells me. “Your mom is neurosis,” I tell him back. Like I said, I am not a bright bulb.

And so now I walk to resist the urge to change everything. It’s perfect, I tell myself. A lie. So I walk. And I learn piano. And I order a treadmill. And I change the layout. And the clothes I wear. And everything that has nothing to do with anything. Only to keep moving in some direction, even though I want to feel lost in that deep forest. I walk to convince myself there is no forest. There is nothing. But I hope there is. I hope for all of us to get lost one day. It will be beautiful, I think.