mumbai three years ago inderpal khalsa 21 was hurtling towards doom he was a portly 85 kgs had issues controlling his temper was snorting cocaine and smoked hash and marijuana he had slashed his wrists in frustration he wanted to kill himself the teenager was left with no motivation and was hurtling towards selfdestruction he had been raised tough his parents had got divorced when he was young and his mother dumped him and his elder brother to marry another man to start another family inderpal and his brother were raised by their maternal grandparents and uncles there were reasons why he did drugs though he was a teenager when he fell in love with a girl when his romantic partner chose to end the relationship he chose to take solace in drugs his frustrations forced inderpal to seek comfort in the devil and he tried to end his life lying on the hospital bed after he had slashed his wrists his grandparents supported him with philosophical words like this too shall pass inderpal perhaps did not need other words of motivation as he started his journey on the road to redemption this sunday inderpal will be running his third mumbai marathona course in vipasana helped him seek deeper meaning in life but it was running that gave him the motivation to live i started by playing football and because i had the stamina i signed up to run in a 10km race finishing the race gave me a positive kick so i trained to run longer events says inderpal who is studying for an mba in sports management at jai hind college after the 10km run india run event which was inderpals first race there was no looking back he next ran the thane mayors varsha marathon clocking 2 hours 2 minutes then came the goa half marathon and the sabarmati half marathon before he attempted his first full marathon the one in mumbai in 2014the addiction to running had replaced his craving for the bad stuff but temptation would always rear its ugly head whenever i had those weak moments i looked back at my running life and thought i had made incredible progress i did not want to go back to those dark days he explainedmeanwhile his expectations from running kept increasing after quickly graduating from a 10km run to a 42km marathon in six months he then set out to challenge the limits of his body by attempting the 100km nilgris ultra marathon he not only finished it but came a creditable fifth in six months of running i realised i had done the wise thing of quitting a bad habit for a good habit now my high was running especially after the nilgris half marathon what i enjoyed most in an ultra is the hallucinating part when the body and mind is tired initially it was tough and i was shocked but after running another 10 to 12 ultra marathons in the last two years