On 28 January, Kumar Ajwani rose in the dead of the night, in what had become a part of his daily routine. It took him a moment to realise that after long, he could now enjoy the luxury of catching a few extra hours of sleep. He soon tucked in again until the morning for some well-deserved rest.
The previous day, Ajwani had signed off on a mammoth run. On 19 November, he had started out from Patni Top in Jammu and Kashmir and covered 3,800 km to finish at Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu on 27 January. The entire effort had taken him a whopping 70 days. He didn’t break for a single day. That’s an average of running 54 km each day.
If the distance and the effort sounds astounding, here’s something else to chew on -- Ajwani is 60 years old. Let that sink in for a bit.
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While growing up in Mumbai, Ajwani would spend a lot of time on the football field. It gave him his first taste of what it was like to be on his feet for many hours.
“There wasn’t much to do during those days -- no television or cellphones. So there was a lot of time to play, especially since I grew up in Bandra. Somewhere along the way, education, career and family took over as priority,” Ajwani says.
In 2005, a colleague handed him a 21 km bib to run the Mumbai Marathon. Ajwani was a regular at the gym and most of his running had been on a treadmill until then. It took him nearly three hours to finish his first half marathon. But for the first time, he realised the joy of running on the road and out in the open.
He soon became a regular on the running circuit, even as he kept increasing the distances. In 2012, he decided to run his first ultra marathon -- a distance of 50 km at the Hennur Bamboo Ultra near Bengaluru. He thought it to be manageable, having run multiple marathons by then.
“I figured how different the two were, even though it was just eight additional kilometres. I threw up by the side of the course time and again. That transition dissolved my ego,” Ajwani says.
Yet, he realised that there was something very appealing about maintaining a consistent effort over the distance. So, he started training for it. The following year, he ran 75 km at the same race, then 100 km at another, followed by 161 km. He had found his place in the world of ultras, yet he realised there was something amiss when it came to his running - a purpose.
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Ajwani is a financial consultant by profession. He’s seen hard days while growing up. His mother was the sole breadwinner of the family, he says they had a hand to mouth existence. After chasing a successful career, he was looking for ways to do his bit for society.
“As Indians, we talk a lot about spirituality, but when it comes to giving, we do nothing. We hold on to everything, whereas each one of us should be looking to contribute in any way that we can,” Ajwani says.
On a flight in 2018, he bumped into Subhash Palekar, a proponent of natural farming. That conversation gave Ajwani’s running a new direction.
“He said - why don’t you do something for the farmers through your run? It was the perfect opportunity for me to test waters,” he says.
That December, Ajwani ran 900k m across Maharashtra as part of a fundraising campaign. He raised enough money to donate 32 Gir cows to small scale farmers, who wanted to practice Palekar’s method of farming. The experience was fulfilling. He now wanted to do more.
The following year, he took on a 1,400 km run from Mumbai to Delhi in 27 days, this time raising Rs 20 lakh for the Pune-based Queen Mary’s Technical Institute (QMTI) that works towards the welfare of disabled soldiers.
“It became a thing to be running on every New Year’s Day,” he says, smiling.
When Covid struck in 2020, Ajwani and his friends raised funds to help migrant workers across the country. Last year, they registered Team Fab Foundation as a charity to continue their work. Besides donating to individuals in need, they’ve also set up a hospital and a school in hamlets near Nashik.
As another December approached, Ajwani started thinking about his next project. Running along the length of the country sounded like an enticing prospect. He shared his thoughts with a few friends and his wife, Khevna. In an instant, they asked him to drop the idea, given the distance and the age factor. Ten days later, he ran it past them again.
“At my age, there is no ego for any victory and no fear of failure. Even if I had failed, I knew I had done my best. You don’t know how the body will behave with every passing day, so I had to give it a go. And I was glad when they agreed. The idea was to spread awareness about QMTI and raise funds for them and the charity,” he says.
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Ajwani’s training over the last few years held him in good stead for the run. He’s logged a monthly mileage of about 600 km on average and mixed it up with stair running, strength workouts and cross training. Over time, he’s gained a good understanding of his body and what it takes to tackle the big distances that he’s grown comfortable with.
“My body is tuned now. I know what my strengths are, which allows me to pull off these steady efforts. When I run alone, I connect with myself and discover things that I didn’t know. There is this inner power that guides me. I feel liberated,” Ajwani says.
The flag off at Patni Top was in freezing subzero temperatures. But an entourage of Indian Army soldiers raised his spirit as he set off on the monumental run.
“I was a little nervous because you know it’s going to be a very different run, really long. I had never tackled anything like it before. Then again, I knew I could take my time once I set off, since I didn’t have a finishing date in mind,” Ajwani says.
Every aspect of the planning was minimalistic. His crew consisted of a driver, and two runners, Parwinder Singh Preet and Sunil Sharma, who kept him company from Patni Top to Mumbai, and Mumbai to Kanyakumari, respectively. Most meals were sorted out along the highway. At the end of each nine-hour running day came the cumbersome task of locating a hotel to stay for the night.
“Some hotels had shut down, some weren’t where the map showed they were. Then in a few states, we struggled to find food because of restrictions on weekends due to Covid. The task of finding hotels, washing clothes and unpacking and packing everyday was often more taxing than the running. I really got fed up with it at one point and contemplated quitting,” he says.
At regular intervals, Ajwani would halt to indulge in conversations with those he met on the road. He came across farmers who toiled all day on their farms and women in purdah who shied away when they saw him. People asked why he was running and offered him a drink or a discount when they realised he was running for a cause. A few even donated money at that very moment. The one constant all throughout was that nobody quite believed that he was a senior citizen.
“Most thought I was lying. And it wasn’t possible to convince all of them,” he says, laughing.
These days, Ajwani is already pondering over his next run. Because for him, age is just a number, like the many miles he’s tread over the years.
The author is a freelance writer from Mumbai who thrives on narrating a good story. Views expressed are personal.
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