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the ears of His Highness, he will surely send Boota to an international athletic tournament.’
    A cunning, one-eyed petition-writer said, ‘Has anyone tested Boota to see if he can run a hundred miles?’
    A bald-headed shopkeeper looked doubtfully at Boota and remarked, ‘A peasant’s sense of distance is very vague. If a man runs as much as thirty miles, he believes he has run a hundred.’
    â€˜Why not arrange a race in our town,’ suggested the headmaster.’ The distance round the big common meadow is about 440 yards. If Boota completes four hundred rounds of this meadow, he will have run one hundred miles. All of us will watch and enjoy it. After this we can plan his future.’ Everybody was thrilled by this proposal.
    I asked Boota Singh if he would like to run around the meadow. He blinked his eyes and merely said, ‘As you please.’
    Maroo, the village drummer announced the news, ‘Listen, everybody! On Sunday morning at seven o’clock Boota Singh, the famous runner, will run a hundred miles race. The people of the town are requested to visit the common meadow and watch this wonderful spectacle.’ Dum! Dum! Dum!
    Early on Sunday people gathered in the meadow to see Boota Singh. He was wearing dull,
khaddar
shorts and a flamecoloured kerchief tied round his long black hair which was rolled up on the top of his head into a big knot. At seven, the retired headmaster, who acted as the referee, whistled and Boota started his solitary race.
    People continued to arrive till eight o’clock. The headmaster sat watching Boota going round and round the meadow with the same speed, in the same posture and with the same machine-like rhythm. The women came flouncing their skirts and sat at one side of the meadow, gossiping about village scandals, deaths and births and watching Boota going round and round.
    At noon Boota stopped, drank a jug of milk which the drummer brought for him, changed his drenched shorts which were clinging to his body, combed his hair and twisted it into a ball on the top of his head, tied his kerchief around it and again started running. He ran on till evening and finished four hundred rounds of the meadow by-six-thirty, half an hour before his scheduled time. The sun was setting. In its rays the wisps of Boota’s hair, straggling from his flame-coloured kerchief, looked like glowing feathers. His chest heaved and over his bronze body perspiration streamed.
    The crowd cheered him. Two people carried him on their shoulders to the
bazaar
. The news hummed through the village. Boota said, ‘It is God’s will. His strength runs in my bones. That’s how I could run this hundred miles.’
    We gave the news to a local paper and made plans to send him to Patiala for an interview with His Highness.
    On the third day, Boota’s mother came from the village. She was about sixty years old, a stout peasant woman with thick lips like her son’s and small bleary eyes. She had come to take him back. We tried to convince her that a great future awaited Boota, but she would not listen to us. She said, ‘I can’t look after the farm. Who will drive away the jackals and rabbits from the crops? The old dog is dead. I am left with no one but my son. I can’t live without him.’
    â€˜Old mother, your son is a world champion and you are holding him in a field under your skirt. His place is not in a remote village but in a city. The world must know about him. You are blocking his career. Don’t be selfish and ignorant and foolish. Leave him with us,’ we all implored.
    She listened with distrust in her eyes and then repeated with a grunt, ‘I can’t live without my son. I must take him back with me.’
    But when the judge said that an interview with His Highness was being arranged, she agreed.
    â€˜Don’t worry, mother,’ said Boota. ‘Soon I shall go across the seven seas and run a hundred miles