The 34-year-old drives home from work, quite stressed. It is not so much her work as a school Vice Principal that winds her up as the afternoon traffic across the landmark Howrah Bridge in Kolkata. She walks in home with a smile but her younger daughter, not yet four years old, sees beyond that and, perhaps underlining the LiveToPlay philosophy, tells her “Go for a run, mom.”
Recalling such tender moments, Mandira Singh Aulakh pauses and says “I find it so beautiful.” But then, she has been the very reason for the four-year-old to understand her mother’s wonderful equation with running. Mandira was running 5km on a treadmill a few hours before she was wheeled into the labour room to deliver Amara back in 2012.
Yes, you read that right: A heavily pregnant Mandira Singh Aulakh ran 5km on a treadmill barely a few hours before delivery. What’s more, she repeated that in 2015 when her son Fateh was born. If you doubt that, watch a YouTube video that her husband Adhiraaj Singh has put up. Or, better still, wait for the documentary, Run Sister Run, which is nearing completion.
Mandira’s as beautiful an endorsement for running as you can get. She has been through three C-sections, putting on 16kg each time. And, though she never had any inclination to run, she found four years ago that running would be the best way to embrace fitness. “I was heavy and I used to be embarrassed at the thought of running,” she recalls.
“I was never a sports person in my younger days. And when I had my elder daughter, Mahee, at 24, I had put on a lot of weight. I felt so out of sorts that I sought all forms of exercise – from kickboxing to lifting weights in the gym – to try and shed weight. But I had no cardio work. When Adhiraaj suggested I should try running, we had a huge row,” Mandira says.
She was convinced enough to attempt a run-walk-run routine on the treadmill and she got better. “The security of a gym where people were not looking at me transformed me,” she says. “Soon I was running and competing with myself.” It was not long before she was hooked to running – for life – and could not think of not adhering to the routine that helped her immensely.
“When we decided to have our second baby, I was like ‘Oh! My God! How can I stay away from running during pregnancy? How can I make this decision?’ I researched and discovered that while women overseas would run, doctors in India were quite unanimous that running would be too risky. There was no way I was going to get depressed without running.
“Fortunately, Dr Chandrima Dasgupta, who had just returned from an overseas stint, supported me and said we would make a call as the pregnancy progressed. Believe me, this was a smoother pregnancy and I was able to attend work and run even on the D-day. Of course, in the third trimester, I was plodding rather than running but I was on the treadmill all right!” she says.
Mandira says the positive attitude developed when running has been a wonderful payoff. “I was a mess 10 years ago but I am in a happy space in my mind now. It is good for marriage and for the kids, too. I am glad I can show that a woman is not as delicate as she is made out to be and doesn’t have to be locked indoors during her pregnancy,” she says.
So, it was no surprise that Mandira continued running when she was expecting her third child. “Since I was more aware now, I ran harder. The reactions ranged from ‘Are you sure?’ to ‘It’s bad for the kid’ to ‘You’re being irresponsible’. Since I was in tune with my body, aware of each cramp, I was careful. When I went on a run, the baby would calm down. It was amazing,” she says.
Mandira has been a rare, if not unique, Indian who has not stopped running when pregnant. She is also among those who believe that running is a beautiful personal journey. That is the reason she runs 5km and 10km on alternate days but does not race. I like to keep it simple,” she says, preparing to get Mahee to click some photographs of her during a run on a beach during her Goan holiday.
This piece was written for zevenworld.com in June 2016
