Rollerblades on the freeway
Quadrilateral that connects Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai.
“My journey is a call for action,” Rana tells Guardian 20. “I am going through the longest recognised route in the country, which is the Golden Quadrilateral, in support of a cause.” The cause is educating the girl child, and campaigning against child abuse.
This 6,000km journey, which is supported by Tata Group and Titan, started in the town of Hosur in Tamil Nadu. At the time of writing this story, Rana had covered a distance of around 3,000 kilometres, and was stationed in a town some 10 kilometres from Kanpur. His journey is expected to end in the first week of December, after he completes 90 days on the road. By that time, it is likely that he will have achieved the objective of this expedition—to generate support for the education of 25,000 underprivileged girls, and to raise awareness of child safety, especially with regard to “good touch and bad touch”.
Despite dropping out of the competitive circuit, Rana remained a committed skater. On his international travels, for instance, he “always used to carry a pair of skates, wherever I went”. He says, “When I was in college, in Melbourne, I used to skate everyday to the university. So I have discovered Melbourne and many other cities while skating. This was my means to connect with other people.”
But skating to discover places or connect with people was one thing, and skating for social change quite another. How did he combine his talent with his conscience? “I had been skating without any sense of purpose,” says the 37-yearold skater and entrepreneur. “But I later realised that it could be used for a greater purpose.”
I was skating and the only goal I had in mind was to cross the finish line at that point. I have written over subjects that could help to fulfil smaller objective and maybe spoken to achieve a smaller goals. But all these three things together, I realised could be used for a greater purpose. That is the opening line of this campaign—to be resourceful to serve a greater purpose.
For many years, Rana has also been a prolific writer on social media, publishing notes and poems on various issues regularly. His skating campaigns, he believes, add more weight to his words, and contribute to bringing about real social change.
On the Golden Quadrilateral tour, Rana travels with a crew of five, including the driver of a backup car. He says, “There are two people helping with the logistics and recording this whole journey, so that it is all transparent. The idea is that we have enough evidence to show the journey to everyone. We also have equipment like GPS trackers, GPS cameras, watches and all sorts of witness records. Lots of things are also required as there are times when we have to stay for the night on the highways. There is one physiotherapist with us as well. He is here as a precautionary measure, because this is a long journey and I have never been on such a journey earlier.”
Before setting out in September, Rana took advice from nutritionists about the kind of diet regimen he should follow during the trip. But keeping physically fit is only one among the many challenges that come your away when you are skating 6,000 kilometres. “I was prepared to overcome the difficulties on the route, as I had an idea about what could go wrong, because I have skated 600km before too. On previous journeys, I had to skate on bad routes especially in old Bombay, where you can hardly see the road. Here, I suffered from a knee disorder that didn’t allow me to bend. I skated for around 120km in one day without bending.
On his ongoing tour, too, navigating big cities was way too taxing. “I do face a lot of difficulties in terms of stones on the road, traffic and so on. Sometimes small pebbles can make you fall. The first thousand kilometres [of his ongoing trip] were very difficult for me. I was skating at 12-14km per hour on the first 10 days. That was partly because I was skating through Western Ghats where you have to keep climbing and for that you need a lot of energy. But today I am okay with skating 20km per hour and can go on without taking a break for 50-60km.”
These are the downsides of long-distance skating. But that shouldn’t take our attention away from the joys of what Rana has been experiencing. He tells us that he has encountered countless stories on the road and met interesting people. He makes it a point to regularly write a few lines of poems inspired by his everyday experiences on his Facebook page—be it about the wind that posed a hurdle for the skater, or about an old woman whom he met in some town. He says, “There are many lessons that I learn on the way every single day... I went to a tribal village Araku in Andhra Pradesh, we shot a video there. I met a girl child there who told me that she›d never had anyone walk her to school. That day I walked her to school. This is just a small incident. I did meet a lot of people and got to know about so many problems that I would never have known otherwise.”
“I was skating at 1214km per hour on the first 10 days. That was partly because I was skating through Western Ghats where you have to keep climbing and for that you need a lot of energy. But today I am okay with skating 20km per hour and can go on without taking a break for 50-60km.”
Rana’s expedition is backed by Tata Group and is part of Titan’s ECHO (Educate To Carry Her Onwards) campaign