Ajay Reddy quit his job and ventured to promote heritage sites in India by organising runs around the sites.
“Remember the Days of Old, consider the years of many generations: ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you.”
As humans, we are free moral agents. Because we can determine our future to a great extent, we may delude ourselves into thinking the past has no relevance for us. But history and past events have very profound and long-lasting impacts on any decision we can possibly make; therefore, all decisions or choices made now are done so in the context of the past.
In a world too often focused on short-term issues we must make the effort to protect cultural heritage sites because heritage matters. Our challenge is to recognise this before it is too late. How about runners contributing to this by taking their run a little bit further, intersecting athleticism and leisure, combining running with travel to heritage sites?
Ajay Reddy, a software professional, quit his job to start an initiative that aims to promote awareness and provide tools for people to engage with heritage. Being a marathoner himself, he wanted to trade on the allure of life-changing experiences in historical sites by organising running events.
Ajay says, “Our motto is to ‘Make Heritage Fun!’ Runs give an incentive to visit and appreciate heritage and experience the landscape of these incredible places better. The value of a heritage comes from its inheritors – from the Living!”
Many runners spend their lives knocking off endless marathons — and though they probably think it’s a stretch, it’s nothing of the sort. Do you want to continue striving for the same goal over and over again? Or do you want to evolve? Our mobile society and fast-paced world, with the immense prosperity we enjoy, has caused us to forget much of our heritage. We have used our time in meaningless pursuits. We have relegated our history books, and our nation’s history books to the corners of our library. We have watered down, or forgotten altogether, our traditions.
One appeal of these runs is not feeling as much pressure and the lure of just going off-road to pursue their own adventures. Runners are goal-oriented people, once they visit a particular site they usually get inquisitive and curious wanting to do another one and another one and another one, says Ajay.
Having organised runs in over eight Unesco heritage sites across India and winning prestigious awards on a global platform, Ajay has enabled thousands of runners to experience the marvel and beauty of these sites. He further adds, “Our other aim is to promote economic incentives for locals through spending by runners clearly demonstrating that heritage is of great benefit economically and not just in abstract terms”.
Heritage, whether it be national, cultural, or family, is an endowment of unique sets of historical knowledge; but foremost, heritage is our history. It is responsible for how we came to be, it is a very large part of who and what we are, and it can determine what we will become.
Our heritage does not fully determine WHO we are; it essentially helps to determine our “starting position” in life. It can give us an idea of what we may have the potential to become. Therefore, in that way it can help define where we may want to go.
(The writer can be reached at gs.sudhakarrao@gmail.com)
