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Wheezing your way up a Hillock

 Wheezing your way up a Hillock ! 

Dinesh K Kapila 

This was a quest. A mighty quest. Armies would have stopped battles to watch it in olden times. Sector 36 has three major parks and people from all walks of life come over to walk along the pathways. One of the parks, quaintly named as The Hibiscus Park, has a hillock. Well, hillock is dignifying it, a gentle grass coated rise of say say 50 feet, along the slope maybe 100 feet. 

Many moonrises ago, I was out walking and decided to take a few rounds of the Hibiscus Park. I stopped going there after one romantic couple, really cuddling away, fed of my repeated rounds, remarked loudly, ‘uncle ji, it seems is vela (totally idle), all he does is walk’. Well, as i was saying many moonrises ago, one late evening, as I entered the park, I saw policemen all over. Rifles in hand, stationed at all sorts of corners. Curious, I walked on, and realised a Minister in the Government of Punjab was out for a walk. With six policemen forming a protective circle around him. 

Our paths crossed. He was going clockwise, I anti clockwise. Now a days I think the ever watchful  rights lobby does not allow the use of the word fat but this Minister was well, really well rounded, at the neck, then the chest, then the stomach (it jutted out rather grandly) and at the thighs. He was ambling and waddling along. As I went to the far side of the park, I realised people were stopping. Our Minister had approached the hillock. He was going to attempt, heroically, a climb up the hillock. Alone at that! 

He stood at the base, as though getting started inside. As we rev up our cars for a race, so did he prepare himself. Bending forward, then backward, then again forward, feet moving up and down. Arms flapping. And then suddenly he was off. Up the gentle slope, he trundled up, slowing perceptibly, nearly half way through, he stopped and decided to roll back, brushing aside the attempt of the guards to hold him, they could only one shoulder a bit. By the way the guards stationed at corners were also watching it, grinning. 

A two minutes rest, again the revving up, off he went, reached I think seventy percent of the way and faltered. He would have fallen if two of the guards, both themselves large bellied, had not held on to him as he was about to roll back. 

The Sub Inspector incharge now gestured something to the guards. As the Minister took his own sweet time getting ready, it was obvious he was determined to prove himself. And getting irritable too. He walked away from the hillock, some thirty to forty paces away and the flapping of arms to get ready started. Then he was off, looking like a huge aeroplane on a runway about to take off, trying to get momentum, his chest and stomach wheezing and troubling him. He approached the base of the hillock with some speed and momentum, that momentum took him up half way and more and his steps then became shorter. But the guards had clearly decided he had to reach the summit, the flattish plateau at the top. Two pot bellied guards grabbed his arms and started pushing him along. The Minister it seems was reconciled to it. Up they went and while the Minister was visibly sagging, legs bending, the guards were at it. Many of us watched, transfixed. Would he or would he not, then suddenly he was up on the summit. Strangely he did not raise his arms in victory even after a minute but just held on to his side, breathing away heavily. The guards near me were smiling away. It was celebration time. I decided to walk on, show over, as they said. I saw the Minister come down, very gingerly, carefully taking his steps, with two policemen holding on to him, he was smiling and certainly looking rather pleased with himself. 

This heroic and epic effort has stayed in my mind, the sheer determination against all odds to somehow reach the summit, huge paunch and chest and all. Motivational,,really. Something  different for my talks. 

PS On a tangent, I see two ladies, from a senior police officer’s family out for a walk. Where I cannot say. Now a tall lanky policeman, revolver strapped to his side, walks with a studiously laconic expression around fifteen feet behind them. Looking straight ahead. Over a period of time the only change is that the tall, thin, lanky policeman has certainly lost weight, the only one apparently to lose weight. And talking of losing weight, there is another very senior police officer. Two armed men in front, one on each side and two behind. Now the two young guards walking ahead have certainly no incentive to lose weight, so our senior police officer, sandwiched in the centre, can only amble along at their pace. A really gentle pace. Sedate it is. Makes for rather a calming and soothing sight  among all the real walkers and jogger’s.

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