Once, when he was 7, Ramu stole a packet of coconut toddy from his father. He hid himself in a bush behind his family’s hut, worked a slit in the plastic pouch with his fingernail, threw his head back and squeezed the clear, astringent liquid into his mouth. After a few sips, he felt warmth spreading outward from his gut, like a sunrise splashing across the sky. Perhaps some of that glow was visible, because his father, returned from an afternoon working in the fields, tired and searching for his drink, rushed straight to Ramu’s hiding place, yelling terrible curses and threats. Clutching the packet, Ramu ran. His father ran after him, his curses and promises of dire punishment growing ever more lurid.

Ramu continued squeezing the toddy into his mouth. And running. Faster. Another sip. Still faster. And another. Faster, ever faster, the world around him merging into a blur in which there was only the wind on his face, the warm glow within and the constant pumping of his legs, oddly detached from his sense of self, like the wheels of a train seen racing away into the distance. Everything around him began to blur, including time. When he finally stopped running, it was past sunset and his father had given up the chase. Ramu slept in a field many miles away from his village that night.

The next morning, it was if he had woken up at the beginning of the world. He had fallen asleep under a coconut tree, and as the dawn mist cleared and the morning chorus of birdsong rose in volume and complexity, everything around him looked bright and new. He took a deep breath; the world smelled fresh and endless. He walked through an open field, skipping between the furrows to the rhythm of this new world’s heartbeat. Suddenly, his idyll was broken by the sound of barking. He turned to see a farmer with a dog running to chase him off the field. Ramu started running again, heading back home because he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. That was when he learned that he could run just as fast without the alcohol. It was just that, as he grew older and rediscovered alcohol at the local government arrack shop, he found that he preferred combining the two. They were two sides of the same coin, twin aspects of a feeling he longed for and could experience in no other way. To Ramu, being drunk and running were the nearest approaches he could make to freedom.

The years went by. Ramu’s elder brother, Shankar, made his way to the big city down the highway. Shankar found work at the construction sites that were springing up as the city transformed itself for a new millennium. Ramu’s parents grew old, grew sick and died; first his father, then his mother. Ramu took over his father’s job at the local landowner’s fields, but he’d inherited too many bad debts from his father and couldn’t make ends meet. Even the hut no longer belonged to him, but to the local landowner, who let him stay on because it was close to the fields he worked on. There was little time to run, or money to get drunk on. Dulled with constant tiredness and stunned by loss, he’d almost forgotten about freedom. Then, the postcard came.

It was from Shankar. He was a foreman now, overseeing the laborers who built the towers and arcades of the new corporate empires. He’d found Ramu a job at a site he was working on. The project would take at least 2 years, and Ramu could easily rise to gang leader or foreman in that time.

It was Ramu’s big chance. The obvious thing to do was to catch the next bus to the city. But he had a better plan in mind. Freedom was alive in him again, like an invisible sun rising within his lean chest. He counted out the coins collected in his belt-pouch and, sure enough, he had just enough money for a shot of toddy. He sat down outside his house, squatting on his haunches, his head cradled in his arms, thinking of nothing in particular, feeling nothing in particular. He remained like this, rocking a little back and forth and humming tunelessly to himself, until his plan finished growing in his head.

All he had to do was have a drink at the local bar and start running. There were plenty of bars along the highway; he would stop at one whenever he tired and have another shot. Reinforced, he would flee without paying, easily outpacing any pursuit. He calculated he could make it in two nights and a day if he started out right away. Which, after packing a few things in a cloth bag and locking the door of the hut, is exactly what he did.

At first, he kept up a middling pace, trying not to wind himself too soon. A gang of children distracted from their afternoon play tried to race him. He easily outran them, as well as several bullock carts and cycles and a few rattling, lopsided district buses. As he left familiar sights behind him, using only the highway milestones to navigate by, he began to run faster. He overtook a convoy of trucks and several cars. At one point, he remained neck-and-neck with an oil tanker for a whole fifteen minutes, just to see the look on the driver’s face. Towards sundown, he felt his calves and upper legs start become stiff. He had run himself far beyond second, third or fourth wind, but even the mysterious reserves he was running on needed some replenishment. When he was overtaken by a wheezing police jeep, he knew it was time to refuel. Slowing down to a loping gallop, he looked out for the next town, 3 kilometers away by the highway signs. Then, after passing a couple of petty shops and outlying shacks, he found a bar. He switched to a normal walk, and waited for his breathing to slow down before approaching the bar and asking the man at the counter for a large rum.

“Color?” the man asked, checking if Ramu needed a dash of orange soda to go with his drink. Ramu shook his head. “Congress?” was the next question. It was the local term for a savory mixture that could be served alongside a drink. Again, Ramu shook his head. “Pickle?” That would be a couple of greasy slices of poisonously spiced mango pickle. Ramu nodded enthusiastically. Presently, a chipped glass tumbler three-fourths filled with rum and a small saucer of pickle were deposited in front of him. Greedily, Ramu sucked the pickle slices dry before downing the rum in a single gulp. “Repeat?” the barman asked. Ramu nodded. This time, he sipped his rum slowly, giving the barman time to lose interest in him and fall into banter with some of the regular patrons at the bar. Ramu then downed the rest of his drink, tightened his dhoti around his hips and took off. He heard startled cries and curses behind him. For a while he could hear the shouts of someone following him and the distant sound of a policeman’s whistle. Soon, it was all left far behind as he surged to full speed, the world around him blurring into a single tunnel of light and sound at the end of which the rest of his life waited for him. After a while, the sounds of pursuit stopped. He sped through the town and was out on the open highway again. At some point the sun had set, and as he ran through the night the only vehicles he passed were buses and convoys of trucks. He stopped once more for a drink a few hours before dawn at a small, dingy wayside bar where the thick-set, taciturn bartender remained stolid and unperturbed even when Ramu ran away.

Buttressed by this pit-stop, Ramu’s speed increased even more as the day dawned, fresh and bright, over the slumbering highway. He passed a van full of pilgrims on their way to a nearby temple town and waved at the passengers. A few children smiled and waved back as their parents blearily thumbed the sleep-dirt out of their eyes, aghast at the sight of a perfectly ordinary-looking villager outrunning the van they’d all pooled in good money to rent. Looking up, Ramu saw a Brahminy kite wheeling about, high above. It looked like it was on some solitary quest of its own, just like him. He felt a sense of kinship with the kite, and was filled with elation to claim such a proud, lofty creature as his brother.

Towards midday, his euphoria began to deflate, and he stopped at a bar outside another small town for a pick-me-up. By now, things were blurring together whether or not he was running, and the world only came back into focus after the first sickly-sweet splash of rum on the back of his throat. Duly picked up, he resumed his run, with a young boy who worked at the bar chasing him for quite a while. The boy laughed and yelled such extravagant curses at Ramu that it seemed more like a game than a serious pursuit. Eventually, the boy gave up, laughing helplessly at the sight of bewildered motorists staring in disbelief as Ramu overtook them.

The highway was at its busiest, and Ramu passed the time by making mental lists of the number of vehicles he saw, divided into broad categories – car, van, truck, tractor, bullock cart, bike, scooter, cycle – and colors. After some time he began noting license plate numbers, arranging them in a vast alphabetical list and adding up all the numbers on each license plate. He lost track of his list after a while, and resumed classifying vehicles by type and color. Sometimes, in towns or villages, gangs of pi-dogs would chase him, tails wagging madly, barking gleefully at him. He outran them easily, laughing with the thrill of the chase. Sometimes gangs of children would chase him too, laughing madly and hurling at him all the insults they had learned from eavesdropping on grown-ups. He began to think ahead to his life in the big city. He would share a room with Shankar. The construction site would be a vast field where masses of workers strove to throw great gleaming towers up at the sky. He imagined the machines his brother had told him about, the crane with its long, lithe neck, half elephant and half giraffe, the grumbling cement mixer like a large, squat toad with an upset stomach. The filigree of scaffolding, the brilliant arcs cast by electric lights switched on through the night to keep intruders away. The rumbling, thrumming music of a new world of burnished glass and steel being born.

Around mid-afternoon, a group of motorcycle riders from the big city caught up with him. They matched pace with him for around half an hour before the leader nodded to one of the other riders, who left the main group to ride next to Ramu.

“What are you running from, man?” the motorcycle rider called out. He was dressed in leathers and a helmet with skulls painted all over it. He had longer hair than Ramu had ever seen on a man, and huge mutton-chop sideburns.

“Nothing in particular,” Ramu replied.

The rider considered this for a while. Then, he nodded. “Where are you running to?”

“The Big City.”

The rider nodded again, and then rejoined his group. He rode his bike next to the leader’s and they conferred for a while. Then, the leader rode up next to Ramu.

“Hello there,” he called out in English.

“Hello, sir,” Ramu replied, recalling what little English had been drummed into his head back in school. “How are you? I am very well. Father we thank thee for the night and the pleasant day…”

“Oh. Err, me too, I’m sure.” The leader switched to the local language, which he spoke with a big city accent. “Look, we’re only heading to Mysore, but we can give you a ride part of the way. What do you say?”

Ramu looked at the man. He had the same long hair and mutton-chop sideburns as the first rider, with the addition of a huge mustache joining everything together. He wore a sleeveless denim vest to show off the tattoos on his arms. Ramu had never seen anyone like him before. Some of the other riders sported a similar look, but most looked more or less like the usual sort of city folk that Ramu saw whizzing by the highway outside his village in their cars and buses.

“Thanks, but I’d lose my pace. I’ll run with you as long we’re on the same road, if you like,” Ramu replied.

“Did you hear that,” the leader cried out. “He thinks he’ll lose his pace if he rides with us!” He laughed uproariously. Some of the other riders joined in. Ramu grinned, not sure what the joke was, but moved by an impulse to be friendly. He had been completely alone for very long; now it felt that the dream of freedom had brought back hope, the world and people, too.

“Tell you what man, you run with us as long as you like, and when you want to rest, we’ll all stop and have a drink together. Is that good?”

“Very good, sir,” Ramu replied. The rider nodded, and then returned to his place at the head of the group.

Several hours later, when the sun had begun to set, they were nearing the turn-off where they would have to part ways. The leader called a halt. Ramu stopped as well. Someone brought out a box full of chilled beers, someone else turned on a stereo. It pumped out a harsh, rhythmic western music very different from the lilt of the film songs Ramu sometimes listened to on the radio.

“We don’t usually drink until the day’s riding is over,” the leader explained, offering Ramu a can of beer. “But this is a special occasion. You’re really running all the way to the city?”

“Really, I am.”

“Then let’s drink to that. Cheers!” The leader clashed his can against Ramu’s and began drinking. Ramu downed the contents of his own can. Someone passed him another can, and a cigarette. He refused the cigarette. Smoking weakened his lungs. After a while, someone passed around a joint. Ramu recognized the sweet smell of ganja. He refused a drag. The leader, catching the whiff, walked up to its source.

“I thought I said no doping on the road!” he cried out.

“Easy man, we thought since we were having a break…”

“Did I give you permission? Did I?”

“What’s the difference? I don’t like beer that much anyway…”

As the altercation increased in intensity, Ramu smiled at the few riders who had not been drawn into it, hitched up his dhoti, and began running again. He ran through the sunset and deep into the night – the second and final night of his run, by his calculations. The next morning, he would reach the city.

He was unsteady at slower speeds by now, so he picked up the pace. He found that if he ran at his very fastest, he didn’t notice the tightness in his legs anymore, or the pain in his sides from struggling to breathe. Only, he was running so fast that he was being hit in the face by a furious breeze. Sometimes bits of grit in the air hurt his cheeks or his eyes. He wished he had a helmet like the bikers, with or without skulls painted on. Not stopping, he reached into his bag and pulled out a spare dhoti. He wrapped this around his head, with the edges of the cloth pulled forward around his face like a hood. He ran on like this for a long time, ignoring everything except the disembodied pumping of someone’s legs, glimpsed from a distance while floating high above. Time sped by. He felt thirsty, but it had been a long time since he’d last seen a bar. Actually, he was running so fast that it had been a long time since he had seen anything but a blur. He had no idea how long it had been since he had left the bikers, or where he was. He didn’t want to run past his destination. He didn’t want to outrun his dream of freedom. Perhaps he should slow down a little, he thought.

He did just that, even though it wakened the ache in his legs, the catch in his lungs. Slowing down seemed to release all the energy that was keeping him going. With a weak cry, he collapsed in a heap and lost consciousness. Many hours later, he came back to his senses. Looking around him, he wondered if he’d woken up at the end of the world. He rose slowly, painfully, to his feet and took in his surroundings. Everything around was completely still. He seemed to be in a small, broken-down town. Buildings stood half-ruined amid piles of rubble, heaps of bodies sprawled about, twisted and lifeless. Somewhere in the distance he could see a monstrous creature with a vast, slender neck and a ghastly, hooked jaw. Elsewhere, another monstrous beast squatted, growling wordless threats. An oppressive rumbling, thrumming noise resounded all around him. Ramu felt he had come to a terrible place, a place where he could believe that darkness could swallow the light of freedom. This was the place where places ran out, the edge of the world, the outskirts of the underworld. Something had punched a way through, and beyond, an ageless world of chaos raged, waiting to burst through.

Dark spots swam before his eyes. He was taken by a fit of furious coughing and heaving that racked his body painfully. He fell down on his hands and knees, retching up a reddish fluid – a mixture of alcohol, bile and something else, something he didn’t want to think about. He removed his head-covering and used the cloth to wipe his face. He retched a few more times, but now he was just hacking up threads of saliva. His belly quivered and trembled, he felt an immense pain, as if his middle would contract until it collapsed, snapping him in half. He lay on his back, sobbing and occasionally retching out more spit. Slowly, he saw lights going on around him – many lights, with a cold, unearthly shine, spirit lights from the worlds of disorder and madness, piercing his vision and his soul with their hungry glare.

He turned on his side, shielded his eyes with an arm and croaked out incoherent attempts at prayer in between his sobs. Somehow, he mustered the strength to get up. He heard crazed voices screeching and bellowing at him as the dead rose from where they had fallen. He thought he saw a ghoul with a familiar face croaking out a horribly approximation of his own name. He had to get away, to escape this final madness at the place where the world died. He had to get away, to chase his dreams of freedom to a place that glowed, just over the horizon. Slowly, he began to run, unsteadily at first, and then with growing speed as his muscles fell back into familiar patterns. He ran as fast as he could, desperately looking out for another bar, another wine shop where he could recharge his depleted energies. He hoped he could find one before his legs gave way.