The first memory I have of Kiran (Joshi then) is of an ever-smiling young girl in the early 1980s, already precocious enough to be in preparatory college at 14 and walking from her home in Sector 27 to Sukhna Lake and back.
I was already some eight years into journalism and riding a moped. If I offered her a lift, she would turn it down with a broad smile, saying: “This my walking time.” Just a year after joining a government college for girls in the city, she started making news as an activist, a theatre actor and more. She had the courage to challenge an oppressive principal, the wife of an influential bureaucrat, when it came to the rights of the students. One interesting incident I recall occurred in the midst of a summer, when the college had no provision for drinking water. Students appealed to the authorities, but their plea was ignored.
Feisty Kiran took it upon herself to collect whatever coins the girls could contribute and bought earthen pitchers which the girls filled daily with water to quench their thirst. This was a story that made headlines in city papers. Protest against injustice was her inheritance. Her grandfather, Shaheed Kanshi Ram, was a revolutionary during British colonial rule and a founding member of the Ghadar Party. He was eventually executed by hanging in the Lahore Jail on March 27, 1915, at the age of 31. His statue was later installed in his ancestral Marauli Kalan village near Morinda in Roopnagar (Ropar), Punjab. So it was no surprise that Kiran fought for the rights of students. Newspapers covered her protests, and she emerged as a young star herself. After college, she went to the Gandhi Ashram in Wardha, Maharashtra, to do a course in Gandhian Studies. There she met a Japanese classmate, Kazuhiro Fujiwara, and later married him. With him, she went to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad where he was heading an engineering project.
We were out of touch for years, and then we met in Delhi with her husband and two growing children but she was as bright and lively as before. Later, I learned that the marriage had ended although goodwill remained between them and she had moved to the USA, built a life and a brilliant career for herself, married an American and had another son.
New beginning: Charlotte, North Carolina
Our never-say-die girl rebuilt her life, becoming the major earner for her second family, acquiring property in the US and building a fine home for her beloved parents Bimla Devi and Mohinder Pal Joshi in Chandigarh. An expert in her field, she works for an international bank as an enterprise transformation coach.
Life went on thus for our “Little Miss Do Good” until her second husband, who, in Kiran’s words, was always “a bit of a bad American boy”, filed for divorce, and, under US law, took half her property, leaving her with a teenage son. This could have crumbled anyone but she braved the dark times by deciding to literally run for a new life. Looking back, Kiran recalls: “I was always fond of walking and running in small races but the first major Marathon was in New York in 2022. Running a marathon is no easy task so I went about it with the precision I put into my banking. So it meant getting a holistic trainer, following a proper diet along with exercises. For me, the trainer was Jessica from New York, and a long relationship was to follow.
Since then, she has run marathons in different countries, taking on new challenges in London, Chicago, Tokyo, Sydney, South Africa, Berlin, Boston and elsewhere. Over the years, running has become a passion and a way of life for Kiran. She shares, “Let’s share something about every race I run. I have tears in my eyes when I am about to start. This is so because I feel grateful thinking of so many people in the world who can’t even walk”.
She adds, “I think of my children when I run and wish them more strength than me to navigate the misfortunes that life may bring with courage. I think of the the swift current of the Sutlej flowing near my ancestral village in India, which I left behind. Running for me is joy, therapy and a new beginning”.
She goes on to say, “You don’t just run with your body, you run with your whole life. Thoughts of my son Ajay, love life, prayers to God to remove the wrong people, even processing a crush — all that happens on the road. The marathon becomes almost like a confessional booth and medical therapy session rolled into one!” Asked whether her thoughts wander to things other than the road, Kiran replies, “I won’t lie, they do. Earlier, it was the unexpected divorce, and now, the youngest child, Ajay, and how I have to pay his college fees and how little I see of him. Other times I wonder if I will have a lover and then find myself beseeching God, “Don’t send me rubbish again!” She adds that even as thoughts visit her she keeps running, running to embrace life.
Back where we started
Talking to Kiran, who has literally seen the world and run across countries and continents, one suddenly encounters the earnest little Sector 27 girl who was born to a mother who had lost two baby daughters. Her mother was advised to dress her only in old clothes, lest she attract the evil eye. She recalls that, when she was a little girl of four or so, she would watch neighbourhood mothers buying garments, when the peddler came to their street,and wonder when she would get something new.
Watching the child, an older neighbour suggested that it was time she got a new dress too.
Kiran came forward and picked one with a bright sunflower. It was sunshine that she sought — and found — as she sang her way along the road of life.
nirudutt@gmail.com
