Ottawa Marathon 2023, OR: How I learned that race planning is critical

I ran the 2023 Ottawa Marathon in 03:47 and change. That's 50 seconds faster than what I managed at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon last Fall. My friends tell me that adjusting for the heat, that’d be 5 minutes or so better than my previous PB. Given that I injured myself and only got 8 weeks of proper training in, I’ll take it. 

A couple lessons:

1. Race strategy is essential - I ran at least 0.6km more than I needed to, which probably added 3 or so minutes to my overall time. Do I run tangents to all the road curves? Do I maintain a certain position on the road? 

2. Hills - there weren’t any major hills that I can remember, but there were several small ones all along the course. My strategy was to use more power at each hill because I fear losing momentum more than anything else. Lost momentum means I’ll have to play catch up on my pace. I’d rather use energy to maintain pace than potentially save a little when the hills hit. Is this the right way to do things?

3. Nutrition and hydration: oh man. I continue to learn how much of an idiot I’ve been during ALL my previous races. Mumbai? No gels. Ladakh? No gels. Ooty? No. Gels. Toronto 2022? Three gels. I went into Ottawa race week fully intending to manage with 5 gels, starting at 21km and proceeding at 5km intervals thereafter. Laughable. I got some advice to start at km 7 and proceed at 7 km intervals after, which I decided to follow religiously (and enabled by buying a metric fuckton of gels that week for good measure). Unlike other regrettable races from my shady past, I started the water and electrolyte intake at the first station seeing as the race conditions were reminiscent of a desert in the summertime. A wise choice. 

4. Friends - BlackToe running is awesome. Having your teammates cheer you in the final few kms is energizing in a way I can’t easily describe. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that they made the difference to me completing the race at least a couple of minutes faster. 

5. Strength training - a lesson I should have learned ages ago but continue to ignore. That’s where my injury came from, but I was lucky to recover just in time thanks to physiotherapy and a month and a half of gym. I will not repeat this error ever again. Welcome to actual race training. 

Okay then! Onwards to the next race and the BT cheer squad. It’s going to be epic. 

Tamarack Ottawa 2023 - Training Update

I'll be in Ottawa in just under a month to run the Tamarack Ottawa Marathon and thought the time was right to write a small update about how training is going and what's on my mind.

Injuries are real and not to be trifled with, but they are definitely preventable

I started running regularly in 2009. Back then, my idea of running was something along the lines of 5km down Marine Drive. But the regular exercise did help be build what I think is a reasonable baseline of fitness that hasn't left me. That being said, progressing to half- and full marathons years later has been a very different ball game. This became especially apparent in January this year when I developed a stinging ankle pain that benched me for two and a half months and forced me to visit a physiotherapist. A lesson I learned here that surprised me was that the muscles in my right leg were weaker than those in my left. I needed to dedicate time to strengthen it and stretch it out. A noob lesson, but an important one to learn. How to tackle this is a matter I'm thinking carefully about for future races. At this point, I'm feeling decent about the race but not great. I think I'll be able to finish, but I anticipate difficulties that will test me more than my prior races.

Nutrition, nutrition, nutrition

The first time I ever ate an energy gel was during the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 2022. The fact that I made it through an entire summer training for the thing without ever eating a gel continues to surprise me. The fact that I trained for and ran marathons, halfs, and ultras in Bombay, Ladakh, and Ooty without ever eating a gel surprises me even more. I recall all of those races being pretty challenging, and I wonder if I'd have had an easier time of them had I paid closer attention to nutrition. Nutrition continues to be a challenge for me, not just while actually running, but also in the periods in between races. 

Learning about myself

I used to aspire to becoming an ultramarathoner. I was inspired by the likes of Scott Jurek and Rich Roll, and my races in Ladakh and Ooty (not to mention cross country in the latter in high school) made me develop a link in my mind between long-distance running and beautiful places. The idea of spending hours and possibly days running in the Himalayas was almost romantic. While I still want to run ultras at some point, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that marathons and road races will be my area of focus for the next 5 years or so. This is because I've realised that:

1. Marathons are high-energy affairs, and I enjoy that immensely. The crowds, the fanfare, the medals, the enthusiasm. I've never done a big ultra, but it's hard to imagine comparable environments until you get to the big leagues like the UTMB.

2. There is a strong community around marathons that I am enjoying thus far. Marathon training often seems to happen in the company of friends (at least where I live now), while ultras sound lonelier. Maybe I haven't found the ultra crew in Toronto yet (not that I've spent time searching)

3. Training well for marathons fits me better at this point in my life than training well for ultras. As I prepare for Ottawa, I'm balancing running with other physical health. I'm seriously trying to build upper body and core strength at a gym, and I'm in the midst of navigating a career in a field that is ever changing and ever uncertain. I also need to sort out other dimensions of myself - mental and emotional well-being, personal aspirations and goals, sleep, building a new life in a new country, and more. I don't have time to train well for an ultra, but I think I can manage to train well for a marathon.

Excited for what Ottawa will bring, and I can't wait to see the city! I'll be running in race team uniform this time round, so if you belong to a certain Toronto-based running club and see me sporting the colours in the capital, be sure to say hi!

Toronto Waterfront Marathon 2022 - The Wall is Real, but not Insurmountable

After Covid torpedoed my plans to run the 2020 Vancouver Marathon and sent me into lockdown for two years, I was glad to finally be able to get back to "serious" running over the last few months. My aim was to sign up for a marathon, any marathon, train for it, finish it, and not get hurt in the process. The spectre of injury is not one I'd like to contend with in real life, so I kept my training slow with the aim to finish rather than finish in a certain time.

And so with a simple and manageable training plan I made for myself I set out to prepare for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon, spending the summer running down the Toronto Waterfront. I cross-trained far less than I should have, and continued to eat and drink in a manner that would make most serious marathoners cringe.

There were a few surprises along the way to be sure. The absence of robust cross training meant that the muscles I needed to fire didn't dire well enough. An ill-planned outing to play badminton left me with a bad knee at a critical juncture of my training plan. An overenthusiastic 36k in the final phases of my training left me with a nasty pain in my hip. I ran said 36k faster than I ran any of my previous long runs, including the many I did in the 2016 - 2018 season when my training was at its "peak" and included races in Ladakh (aka the Greatest Run in the Universe), Ooty, and Mumbai with their accompanying altitude, elevation changes, and heat and humidity (I'm looking at you, Marine Drive).

But in the end, I felt reasonably confident as I lined up in the blue corral at the start of the course. Running in North America definitely left me feeling as if I wasn't in Kansas (or maybe Katamnallur?) any more, given that the running culture in this part of the world included people who routinely ran marathons with 3:15 timings or lower.

Ah well, time to pay attention to the course. The announcer thanked the city for all the work that went into making the race a reality. He welcomed the new Canadians who were making Toronto home and urged us to bring our friends and family here as well. Heart. He thanked the volunteers whose efforts really sat at the core of the event. He talked a little *too* long, and I felt the urge to yell - "let's just get it started!"

Eventually, we were off, running down University Avenue under the grey skies of a Toronto October. Cheer stations abounded. People with funny signs. Runners of all ages. A row of portable toilets I wished I'd spent more time at. Curses. 

A station with Iranian flags and signs caught my eye. The station's music competed with Ozzy Osbourne yelling about big black shapes in my earphones, and was unsuccessful in drowning him out, though Ozzy's screeching did help energise me. Barreling down Bathurst, I crossed the BlackToe Running cheer station, immediately recognisable thanks to the yellow fun squad t-shirts and the unmatched energy. I almost wished I wasn't running the race so I could join in! The energy was contagious, and I had to check my pace a couple times as I hit the waterfront, making my way down a route that formed the backbone of my training, with the water to my left and a bunch of corporate logos to my right.

The runners eventually looped around, making their way back towards downtown. I looked up to my right and saw my condo building just before it disappeared under the elevated road that is Toronto's Gardiner Expressway. It was at this point that the marathon and half-marathon courses split up. I gave myself a quick nod to acknowledge being at the halfway point.

BUT, I also noticed that I suddenly wasn't feeling very good. I couldn't tell if it was the lack of light (I was still running under the Gardiner), dehydration (my lips DID feel a little dry), or maybe a lack of fuel (I had yet to eat anything at 21km), but the mild dizziness I was feeling got me to (almost) stop in my tracks. To top it all off, I'd started to feel some tightness in my calves, a sensation that usually hit me at the 30km mark while I was training. Not. Good. Was this the Wall? Did Pink Floyd REALLY come up on my Garmin at the exact same time? 

I didn't really have a strategy in mind at this point, and was focused more on the somewhat dreamy feeling in my head that was getting in my way and preventing me from keeping my eyes on the road too long. What the heck was happening? My pre-race breakfast was exactly the same as what I'd eaten during every practice run, I'd hydrated well the day before and during the race so far, and my pace was consistent with my plan.

Without thinking too much more, I made a beeline to the water and electrolyte station just ahead and downed two cups of each, coming to a complete stop for what would be the only time during the race. I also pulled out a maple syrup gel from my pocket and gulped it down, the sticky sweetness of the maple together with the slightly sharp undertone of the ginger leaving me with a smile on my face.

In a couple minutes I could feel the dizziness fading away, but it seemed like my calves were still tied up in knots, so I did something that had worked pretty well for me in the past - I sped up! I don't recall just how much I increased my pace by, but after a few kilometers of struggle I felt my calves open up. The race was now back to normal, and I ran on uneventfully (knocking back water, electrolytes, and gel every 30 minutes or so) until kilometer 40, when I accelerated to finish pretty strongly.

Overall, I finished feeling strong, had no injuries, and was back at work the next day (sigh) with minimal issues besides the usual aches and pains. I even managed to not lose any toenails this time round! Onwards and upwards - maybe Ottawa is next?

Some thoughts for the next race:

1. I objectively did not train well for this race, something that I will not repeat the next time around. While I was reasonably consistent in my approach, clocking a decent 50 or so km every week as I built up, I did no cross training, didn't have my nutrition sorted out, and didn't monitor my progress with any granularity.

2. I achieved my objective of finishing the race without getting hurt, and I did so in a time I'm pretty proud of. I am confident I can replicate my performance and probably do better next time. A running mate at BlackToe (who knows what he's doing given that he runs elite times) said he was confident I could shave off 20 more minutes with the right training and nutrition next time around.

3. My next run will be in the Spring, which means training through the very dead of Toronto's winter. Winter running isn't totally new to me, and I thoroughly enjoyed in the last time around, so I'm excited to get going! It's also good training for the time when I finally start thinking about ultramarathons (in cold places) more seriously...

 

 

 

The Geoscientists of Tomorrow

Another year, another downturn in the oil and gas industry, and geoscientists in almost every oil company are likely contemplating career switches or are fearful of what the future holds. A couple of years ago, a geoscientist based in Canada wrote about “the new reality”, with the next recovery being one dominated by shale and digital tools, and coding as an essential skill. Fewer geologists would be needed to prop up the oil industry, and another crash would happen. “Yesterday’s geoscientist” made maps and calculated volumes, and those that fit this description had "no time to waste". 

I believe these predictions were accurate, though the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that the shale boom is in dire straits and may not recover its former glory. Indeed, one finds oneself asking if oil itself is going to regain its former glory. Any seasoned oil professional would be tempted to scoff at those who answer in the negative, but it’s hard to not see the writing on the wall. That leads to the question of what next for the people who make the industry what it is. I’m not a geologist any longer – at least not professionally – but I do wonder where the field will find itself in a few years with the increasing likelihood of oil going out the door and the near certainty that in the time before it does, it will need fewer geoscientists to find and extract it.

So, where does the seasoned geologist go? Is there any point studying geology in college if there are only a few jobs available? What’s EXCITING in the geological sciences these days? What can a geologist do besides oil?

Some of the answers are obvious, and can be found in any geology 101 class where professors try to recruit undergraduates to their programmes. Mining, hydrology, environmental science, fundamental research. The world’s newfound hunger for metals like lithium and cobalt will help, and the need to better manage groundwater resources will undoubtedly need a new generation of earth scientists. The need for constant scientific advancement in the Anthropocene is real, but an oversaturated and archaic academic job market is a challenge to even the most dedicated and privileged student or early-career researcher. The skills that training in the geological sciences are valuable, and can be transferred to many other fields, but what of the geologist who wants to stay a geologist? As bad as this downturn is, oil is not going anywhere in the near term and the industry will still need geoscientists to quantify it, extract it, and explore for it. Can these geologists fill that need? The answer is yes, but there will almost certainly be an overflow.

The reality is that the number of geologists needed, at least in exploration and upstream research, will likely dwindle in the years to come. Another reality is that the pipeline for new geologists is narrowing: far fewer young people today are interested in becoming petroleum geologists, and for many good reasons. I recently read an annual report from an “Earth Sciences Department” in the United States, which touched on how the number of undergraduates seeking geology majors was at its lowest in several decades. This could be bad news for the departments whose funding depends on student numbers (disclaimer: I have no real idea of what incentives universities offer to departments to boost undergraduate enrollment but I imagine that some mechanism exists), but I wonder if this is worse news for a planet that needs repair; one that it seems cannot be healed in the time our species needs it to be by nature-based solutions alone. We need solid-earth scientists to save the world.

 

The geoscientists of today wield the tools of today. They are proficient coders, and maintain strong 3D visualization skills that have transitioned from the Rule of Vs in structural geology to the ability to generate entire outcrops digitally using photogrammetry. They deploy machine learning to solve problems, and have evolved from being Petrel button-pushers to much more. All the while, they do what they do using “incomplete data” of dubious quality, quantify what they don’t know, and make decisions worth more than the average Silicon Valley venture capital deal with risk that is not only financial, but human and environmental. All this sounds really sexy, but the real problem in the middle of all this is that even the geoscientist of today works on what is essentially a problem of yesteryear: oil.

Geoscientists need new problems to solve, and should focus on finding them. Solving these problems will need new tools – and just running Monte Carlo simulations on hydrocarbon volumes simply won’t cut it. It’s becoming increasingly likely that oilfields will become stranded assets so the volumes won’t matter – just like the points on Whose Line is it Anyway? (the show where everything’s made up – much like the conceptual models geologists build*). So, in addition to learning new tools to solve problems, perhaps geoscientists should look for new, better, and more relevant problems to solve, and get down to solving them**.

Some ideas:

Problem Number 1: Too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

I like to think of a large, industrial scale solution to this problem in terms of the oil industry in reverse with some renewable energy magic thrown in. The technology for the subsurface injection of carbon dioxide exists and is proven. The storage capacity of the subsurface is large enough. And capture systems already exist. The “upstream” component of this system will be driven by process engineering – making Direct Air Capture cheap enough to deploy at scale – pipeline and facilities engineering to transport captured CO2 to storage sites, and finally production engineering and geology to inject the CO2 into the ground. We're now "downstream", back to the good old reservoir engineers, development geologists, well engineers and geomechanists to prevent all of this from blowing up. Now if any of this sounds like arm-waving, you’re absolutely right. I am a geologist after all and some old habits die hard. But the fact is that the subsurface challenges – seal integrity, reservoir characterization, storage site exploration, geomechanics – have been studied extensively for decades and we have the expertise and workforce to get this done safely and effectively. How might these disciplines change in the context of carbon capture? Sounds like a job for some subsurface people looking to do cool stuff…

*The dig at geologists and our conceptual models I refer to comes from a quote by RL Bates, an economic geologist. Part of it is preserved in the link in the main body of the blog, but I've tried to reproduce the rest of this brilliant quip from memory. Anyone with access to the original is encouraged to post it!

I wonder who was the very first geologist to get it into his noddle

That an educated guess about something would sound better if he called it a model?

Now we get models for everything from the origin of dolomite to why the mid-ocean ridges are faulted,

And somehow the whole process seems very serious and exalted.

I believe that the term model so bewitches

Because it is a dignified term for a more or less ragged cluster of cerebral itches. 

**The BIG disclaimer:

It’s all well and good to tell geologists to solve new problems. Oil is evil, keep it in the ground, the future is renewable, we’ve heard it all to the point of exhaustion. The trouble is that it isn’t ultimately the geologists’ decision. Money talks: who will pay for this? Companies are already doing carbon capture, now if only it can be done at scale! But, where is the money going to come from to pay people to do this? Maybe we need geologists who know finance, policy, strategy, renewable energy, and environmental justice to figure this out. Or perhaps we need professionals in the latter fields who know geology. Or perhaps we need something bolder… 

Geotourism: Romania

Note:

The following was published in the newsletter of my former employer. One of the monthly features was a travel article to a place of geological interest. I wrote this piece after returning from a wonderful, two-week trip to Romania in 2015.

___

Back in the good old days when vampires didn’t wear makeup or wreak havoc at the box office with terrible movies, they lived peaceful lives in quaint Transylvanian castles, terrifying peasants and scaring away nosy Ottomans. This month’s Geotour takes readers to Romania, a land of castles, unfiltered beer, and spectacular geology.

Bucharest, the most common port of entry for travelers, is interesting with the juxtaposition of the old town of the 18^th century with the traces of the communist regime of the 1980s and the party lifestyle of youth today. Two days are enough to explore Bucharest, which boasts several attractions including the Palatul Parlamentului (the world’s second largest building after the Pentagon), the famous Case cu Bere (Bucharest’s oldest pub, serving unfiltered beer on tap), and the Herastrau Park with its sailing boats and floating cafes.

Stained glass windows at Casa cu Bere

The geology starts in Sinaia, Jewel of the Carpathians, two hours away by train. A popular hill resort and former summer getaway of the Romanian monarchy, Sinaia has something to offer travelers of all tastes. The Castelul Peles, built in the early 19^th century by King Carol 1, is the first stop with handsome interiors dedicated to the Turkish, French, Italian, and Romanian cultures.

The Peles Castle in Sinaia

Hiking trails to the Bucegi Mountains National Park begin at the nearby town of Busteni. A cable car is available to ferry people to the top, with breathtaking views of limestone cliffs along the way. Bucegi is famous for its rock formations, the Sphinx and Babele, rock formations built out of glacial sediments. Glacial erratics of granite and limestone are encountered within the sandstones, and limestone caverns are a short hiking distance away. The highlight though is the trek up to the park and back, a round trip that takes close to eight hours through coniferous forests, rope bridges, and glaciers cutting through limestone.

The Sphinx, carved out of glacial till, with tiny geologist for scale.

Hiking down from Bucegi National Park

The final stop on the tour is Brasov, the centre of Dracula country. Founded by the Teutonic Knights in the 13^th century, Brasov is famous for its cobbled streets, fortifications and watch towers, and most of all, the famous Black Church. Devastated by a fire during the Turkish War between the Ottomans and Habsburgs in the 17^th century, the church’s blackened façade gave it its new name. The Bran Castle, supposedly one of the inspirations for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (though Stoker never visited Romania himself) is nearby and makes for a good day trip. Brasov’s geology is to be marveled at as well, with the Valea Cetatii caves close at hand. A short tour conducted by speleologists from Brasov is the usual way to visit, but advance notice lets you join experienced cavers in a two hour crawl through the caverns. The Brasov Philharmonic (though stripped down to five performers) plays inside the caves once a week as well.

Romanian food is definitely great for meat-lovers (Mici, Romanian meatballs with potatoes is particularly recommended), but soups are a big part of the menu almost everywhere and can be a tasty option. Palinca, or plum liqueur, is a local favourite and is surprisingly pleasant when sipped, but at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. I was happy to add a bottle to my growing collection of unusual liquor from abroad!

  

A Geologist Writes About His Rock Collection (Part 1 of Many)

On an indeterminate day in ~ 1996, I collected my first mineral specimen. I was about 6 years old at the time, and like many of my antiquity did not know the difference between a rock and a mineral. So I called my fledgling collection a rock collection and it came to be called a rock collection.

12 years later, I had the pleasure of answering firmly in the affirmative when a couple of unlucky moving company workers asked of the (moderately heavy) boxes they carried to my new home in Bangalore: "What do you have in here, rocks?!"

10 years further on, and I'm moving house again. Unfortunately, my rock collection couldn't come along this time and I'm not certain when I'll next see it.

If that last line sounded to you like it was dunked in a deliciously warm mug of emotion, you're right. People become geologists for all kinds of reasons. Among my geologist acquaintances are those who embarked down that rocky road because of the allure of the oil industry, those whose first career choice in medicine or engineering failed, and even a few who took it up simply because it was "something different" in an engineering obsessed country. The driving force behind my decision to study geology was an almost irrational fascination about the Earth and its products, a desire itself rooted in the beautiful mineral and rock specimens that occupied my home for so long.

I thought I'd write a little about my collection of rocks, far away as it is now, as a means of reliving the moments when I collected them. My rock collection is more than a few quartz, zeolite, fossil, ore, and rock specimens. My collection of rocks is a collection of memories.

Blue Chalcedony

Chalcedony is a kind of quartz. Made up of  crystals, tiny and numerous, chalcedony is given the quaint yet now modern sounding descriptor "cryptocrystalline". Called agate or onyx when banded, or carnelian, chrysophrase, or sardonyx when coloured, chalcedony represents the triumph of nucleation over growth, the two processes that compete to create crystals. On a blazing summers day in 1998 Nashik, I trekked up Ramshej Fort to see Long-Billed Vultures nest. Somewhere along the way a glint of blue caught my eye, and I wiped away the mud on a boulder to reveal a vein of bright blue chalcedony. My poor father, who happened to be with me at the time, soon found himself on his knees, chipping away at the vein with a piece of basalt I had helpfully commandeered for him. This would not be the first time he did something like this. Some time later, I held the specimen up to the light and marvelled at its colour. The colour of minerals is what attracted me to them in the first place, led me to collect and study them as an amateur, and ultimately write my master's thesis on them.

Colourless Apophyllite

There is no dearth of dirty jokes in the geological sciences given our colourful technical vocabulary. One of my favourite geological terms is cleavage, the property of certain minerals to split along preferred crystallographic planes due to weak bonding. Apophyllite is a silicate mineral in the tetragonal crystal system that displays stunning basal (or pinacoidal if you like even fancier terms) cleavage, meaning that its crystals tends to break, quite easily, in directions parallel to their bases. Before I knew what cleavage was (mineralogical, or well, the other kind), I was fascinated by the razor thin reflective surfaces I saw in apophyllite crystals. My great uncle, a retired GSI geologist and one of my inspirations to take up geology, bequeathed unto me a pocket lens that I used to gaze deep into my apophyllite crystals. On one such occasion, carelessness led to the crystal slipping from my grasp and falling to the floor, splitting in two along the surface my eye was so keen to study. In my first ever mineralogy class as an undergrad, I learned what that surface was, why the crystal broke along it, and that one of the signs of a seasoned geologist is the ability to resist chuckling when someone says "cleavage" in class.

Pelitic Granulite

In 2011, I visited the South Delhi Fold Belt for three weeks of geological fieldwork. The fact that we were in Gujarat, a famously "dry" state, meant that we actually had to work instead of indulging in bottled pleasure every evening the way most respectable geologists do. On one of our traverses, we came across a massive outcrop of pelitic granulite, remnants of shale that had been buried deep in the Earth's crust, metamorphosed, and finally exhumed in a shiny, banded avatar. The granulite, with its pink leucosome bands and black melanosome bands, would look perfect in my display cabinet and so I set out to collect a sample with my trusty Estwing E320. Now, as someone accustomed to working in basaltic terrain with only minor exposure to metamorphic rocks, I hadn't a clue about how hard these rocks really were: something I was soon to discover at the expense of my hands which were bloodied and bruised by the time I had collected a reasonably sized sample. On this occasion, the term "hand-specimen" as used by many a geologist, could apply just as easily to the granulite I had laboriously extricated from the rock mass as it could to my own appendages that were red, swollen, and covered in all manners of cuts and bruises.

......

To be continued... 

See you later, Snout.

Zorro, my lovely black Labrador, died yesterday at the ripe old age of 13. He was a simple dog who valued his privacy and despite having touched the lives of many people through the years preferred a quiet funeral. I decided nevertheless that a eulogy of sorts was warranted and thought I'd publish it here.

I met Zorro in August 2005, a month before my 15th birthday. My mother picked me up from school one day and we went to meet Zorro at his old home. His owners didn't want him any longer and asked his vet if he knew anyone who was interested in adopting an 8-month old black Lab. The vet had visited us a few days earlier to administer an injection to our crotchety old Cocker Spaniel, Bandit, and told my mother about Blacky, as Zorro was then known.

I caught a glimpse of Zorro, black as night with a bright pink tongue, as I opened the gate to his owners' home. In the time I took to walk up to him, he planned his attack and sprung at me, knocking me over with a well aimed jump to my chest. He proceeded to lick, nip, and slobber all over me, making it clear that he approved and was ready to adopt us. He clearly knew what he was doing.

We packed him up into our car and drove home. Uncertain of whether or not he'd wreck my room at night, I tied his leash to the leg of my bed. I awoke the next morning to find him snuggled up comfortably next to me and the leash in tatters on the floor.

I like to think Zorro was simply meant to be our dog. My house was full of books, and Zorro quickly took to reading many of them. He devoured the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde and was a regular consumer of the journalistic efforts of the Economic Times and The Times of India. He sometimes suffered from indigestion, and I have little doubt which of these publications was the cause. He patiently worked his way through Anita Desai's The Village by the Sea but seemed to lose interest in reading after that. Having read the book myself, I can attest to the fact that Zorro must have found it hard to swallow.

He tried very hard to make friends with Bandit who was himself well into retirement when Zorro joined our family. Zorro lay down in front of Bandit with his tail wagging, but received only low-pitched growls in return. I like to think that Bandit and Zorro would fit perfectly into Ogden Nash's Two Dogs Have I. When Bandit suffered with gastroenteritis, Zorro sat by his side for days, gently prodding his stomach from time to time as if to check on him. When Bandit finally died, Zorro sulked for days at the loss of his mentor. He bravely took up Bandit's duties of demanding walks, being greedy, and generally behaving like an ass all the time. He excelled at the last of these, prompting us to call him Ass just as much as we called him Zorro, Black Blockhead, Snout, or any other of a number of names.

Zorro loved travelling in the car. He and my mother would drop me to the bus stop every morning before school, and Zorro would eagerly await the arrival of the bus so that he could occupy my seat in the front. This practice was so intriguing to passers by that I was asked about my dog by fellow students, the bus driver, and the bus conductor. Up to the very last day of his life, where he struggled to even stand up because of his weakness, Zorro's reaction to the jingling of the car keys was quite the spectacle: he'd almost jump off his mattress and bound to the door, grunting and hopping with excitement. Dogs can teach people a lot, but the most valuable lesson I've had from Zorro is to love life and use every opportunity to the maximum.

His love for travelling took him to Goa, Wayanad, Kolar, Ranganthittu Bird Sanctuary, and more. He blubbered at the sight of deer and elephants in Nagarhole National Park, swam to save his own life in Mobor Beach in Goa, and snouted at crocodiles in a Coracle in Ranganthittu. When we moved to Bangalore and settled into our new flat, we once took Zorro down to the swimming pool. When my sister and I jumped into the water, Zorro started to panic and jumped in to save us. Shortly after, a sign appeared asking swimmers to leave their pets at home. Hardly a week into his new home and Zorro had already made an unforgettable impression.

Not one to confine himself to a single set of interests, Zorro dabbled in dance and show business. His talents were soon noticed and he was invited to star in his own dance video where he performed Michael Jackson's Moonwalk to perfection. His humble and gentle nature however led him to eschew fame in favour of a life spent sleeping on his fat mattress, supervising my mother in the kitchen, and playing with toys that we brought him from as far away as The Netherlands and the USA.

We'll miss you, Zorro! Take care wherever you are and don't stop snouting, Moonwalking, and behaving like an ass!