The Race

She was 7. She was at the annual sports competition. It was time for the running race. She loved running. Everyone told her she was no good at it, but she participated in all the races whenever she could. She just loved running. The brown tracks, the white lines, the red banner of the finish line, the spoonfuls of glucose offered after the race, the feeling of wind slapping against her face (she never did understand why all races were held against the wind in her school) and just the feeling of running. Sometimes she felt she wouldn't stop even after reaching the finish line. She... loved running.
At the end of the day's race, she threw herself down on the grass, unmindful of the brown patches on the back of her shorts, slurping up her glucose. Her father found her sitting there, licking her lips, her fingers and swallowing more dirt than the white powder. "You... did... not...win." He gritted through his teeth.
She looked at him, puzzled. "But I did not want to."
Her father didn't hear her. "Divya won." He spat. "You are no good. Why do you make me bring you here and waste my time and energy!" He stalked off, trampling the grass on which she sat.
She thought about it and shrugged. Then she continued licking her fingers. The next race was about to start. She was going to run.
***
She was 15. She was studying frantically for her board exams. She knew she was not good enough for a first class, but she desperately wanted it. She had sat up day and night, memorizing history, vomiting geography, shaping geometry on paper. Whenever she took a break, she would look at her hands and would unconsciously start tracing a mehndi design on it. She closed her eyes and saw herself doing the designing for a big wedding, for the richest and most famous celebrities; how even as she completed one hand, people clamoured to be the next in line. The next minute, an image of her father would come to her mind, saying "Divya will beat you. She will become a doctor. You? You are hopeless." And she would want to weep and weirdly enough, run.
Instead she would silently go back to her books. She had to be a doctor.
***
She was 28. She was a doctor. She sat in her big clinic, with its big sign saying "General Physician". She gazed at her patients, patiently nodding as they thanked her effusively for the prescriptions she made out on yellowed paper, which also said "General Physician". She tried to look polite and understanding, but what she really wanted to do was to examine their hands. As they blabbered on about their problems concerning their health, family, personal life, she gazed at their hands, tracing out a different mehndi design each time.
Her father had died a year ago, from a disease no one could quite determine. She did not feel guilty that she hadn't been able to cure him in spite of being a doctor- sometimes she thought she didn't feel guilty only because her father had tried so desperately to make her feel so during the last stages of his illness. Occasionally, when she was very tired but still had work to do, she thought of him, and almost immediately found herself back at work.
That particular day, she was exhausted. She gulped down her evening tea, cursed the usual extra-sweetness and then glanced at the magazine that her secretary always brought along with the tea. She looked at it, then stared. The cover screamed, "Designer Divya to be part of the biggest wedding of the decade. To read more of her plans for the mehndi ceremony of actress JK turn to page 22."
She stared at it silently for some time. Then she jerked out of her chair and stumbled to the door.
"Where are you going?" Asked the receptionist.
"I am going to run."