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Walks populi

The morning walkers' concerns reach far beyond a healthy lifestyle, finds out A. Saye Sekhar

WALK THE TALK The day begins with a brisk walk PHOTO: RAJU. V

Walk the talk. This is no TV soap interviewing celebrities. Coming from all walks of life, fitness freaks in the city walk for health on the several walking tracks. Luxury cars - big and small -- and motorcycles - sleek and macho - travel past the driveways to find parking.

Walking tracks in the city are abuzz with hundreds of walkers pounding the ground all through their brisk walk. Grounds of Andhra Loyola College, P.B.Sidhartha, V.P.Sidhartha, V.R.Sidhartha, N.S.M. Public School, NTR Health University, IGMC Stadium and many such locations provide the necessary ambience, making the landscape mellow by the rays of the rising sun, to the fitness buffs to sweat it out in the mornings. Lush green raiment of the trees emanates oxygen in abundance for the walkers amid the woods.

As the morning dew on the blades of grass begins to melt and slowly vanish, walkers, dressed to the occasion, in hordes put their best foot forward ushering in the light of the new day. Their ultimate objective: To shed flab and gain good health. Is that all? No. Certainly not. Early risers are the lucky few to take a dekko at this picturesque scene.

A happy blend

An attempt to eavesdrop at any site offers a lot of food for thought. They talk. Talk everything under the sun. Foibles of every commoner are impaled here. Padmabhushan to Chiranjeevi, avoiding `Bharat Ratna' to the late NTR and Aarti Agarwal's critical injury are debated at length. Talk of miserable misers, tax evaders, secret polluters, preening lawyers, idiosyncratic doctors and oily accountants becomes an inescapable ingredient.

Younger bodies run to their limbs' content. The not-so-young take a swift walk and the most grey hairs never lag behind. Looking at the joggers, the old and the middle-aged blurt out: "We too had the same exuberance, strength and vivacity to run leaving past the clouds of dust rising from the ground."

Suppressing the gasp, they go on lecturing their fellow walkers on how healthy regular walk is. Chipping in, another one blabbers on how his rising sugar levels, spiralling diastolic and palpitating heart forced him to get out of his most favourite resting place - the bed - and come on to track. Then there is an uncle next door to tell you how your earnings are drained out on medical expenditure.

Bourses, fund managers, skyrocketing stock market and the best of the public issues find their due place in the yak. There are a few to crib over the losses they suffered too.

The crowd of realtors marches through the tracks busy calculating the rise in prices of real estate. The comparative price rise in a span of five years in all important areas in and around the city figure on the top of their priority list, while the talk nineteen to dozen on the booming land value in Ranga Reddy district and Jubilee Hills too occupy the centre stage in the conversation. Those few builders craftily make their presentation in the strictest of jargon spelling everything in terms of square feet, carpet and common area and plinth. Construction costs and building materials are their favourite topics in the morning walk.

Chewing the fat is a group of people who share nothing in common, except the headlines in vernacular dailies. Freedom of Expression enshrined in the Constitution can be felt in its fullest form when you hear them pronounce `judgments' on the Government's decision on creamy layer among backward classes, `jalayagnyam' or fetching Fab City to the State.

Endless gossip

Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy and N. Chandrababu Naidu essentially become epicentres for the ideologically divided crowd to weave around their thoughts and views.

As you walk past all of them, you are sure to find parents of the young ones who completed their professional courses like engineering and are waiting in wings to fly mostly to the United States. Offering free advises to them are the parents who have their offspring already eking out living in dollars there.

After an exhaustion for almost an hour, a few gather at the benches or resting places to pour out their hearts over a tussle with a tenant or a house-owner or the watchmen of their apartment complex. Enthusiasts divert the issues to civic administration, road-widening and fixing of water meters.

Cooling their hooves under the shade of bushy trees, the esquire men do recall their peccadilloes and laugh till they are exhausted. Finally, as the clock ticks 8, the grounds become empty getting ready to host another set of people in the evening. The walk and the talk go on sans any impediment.

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