Suffering⁴¹

In some ways the Orange Bowl Marathon was worse than the Greek marathon. In Greece I didn’t suffer until after seven or eight miles. Here I began suffering after two miles. Then for six or seven miles it was drizzling, and for six or seven miles it was raining heavily. The newspaper said it was raining cats and dogs. Sometimes you could not even see anything in front of you because of the rain. The first two miles I wore a hat. Then it was so hot that I took it off and gave it to Savyasachi. “I will manage without it,” I said. Then when it started raining so heavily, I didn’t have the heart to put it back on.

Once while I was walking, an old man who was helping at one of the water stations put a sponge on my head and then brought it down along my spinal column. Such relief! He didn’t say a word. He just moved the sponge from my head down my spine. He knew how much we were suffering. Everybody looked so pitiful.