Purnima Shah (BOMBAY TIMES; July 31, 2018)

Last weekend, actor and fitness promoter Milind Soman was in Chennai for The Saree Run With Milind, a Pinkathon event, where women in their best saris came to run along with him. On both the days that he was here, he also ran with Divya, a partially visually impaired girl who will be running from Puducherry to Chennai next month. Milind took some time off from his packed running schedule to talk about the things that are close to his heart. Excerpts...

‘Running has become a movement’
When I started Pinkathon, I never thought I would see so many people running. There were many running events, but only a few women were participating in them. I strongly felt the need for a space for women runners since there wasn’t any platform like that. When the participation started increasing, we decided to take it to other cities, and in every city we went, the enthusiasm was really inspiring.

‘It was surprising to know that no one was ready to invest in a run for women’
There aren’t many women-only events. Sponsors used to tell me that women are just not the market for them; the reason being women are not decisions takers in their homes. It was surprising to learn those aspects as how products are sold in India and what brands believed of themselves.

‘Walked more than 300 km; had a barefoot wedding in the woods’
Ankita and I always wanted a barefoot wedding in the woods, so we went on a long trip to Portugal and Spain, where we walked together more than 300 km. It was great fun to just walk, something I have never done before. Some days, we walked the entire day. We went through more than a hundred towns and villages, through fields, forests and the countryside. I had never done that before. It was too special for all of us, even for Ankita. For me, walking is more difficult than running because it’s a different set of muscles and movement. By the fourth day, my whole body was aching. We were walking between 15 and 30 km every day. My mother was better because she walks daily, and does a lot of trekking, too, but for me and Ankita, it was a little uncomfortable, but we got used to it.”

There’s buzz that you and Ankita are likely to enter Bigg Boss 12?
Well, nobody has approached me yet for Bigg Boss and I have no idea when this happened. I don’t know why they are even coming up with names that are not confirmed. It’s always like that, they randomly choose names and put it up.

‘Smoking is acceptable and available and that’s why we don’t see any wrong in it’
I quit smoking in 2003. Smoking is an addiction, and we also know that it can kill you. And going by my personal experience, I can say that a smoker lives only 40 per cent of his or her life. So, why would you want to do that? I don’t think it’s worth it; smoking takes away too much from your life and I have felt that personally. It was those days when I just started acting in television where people of my age group used to smoke a lot. Cigarettes were cheap, so, people used to offer it to everybody. Those 10 years, I never bought a single cigarette, but used to smoke more than 30 cigarettes a day. From just one drag to addiction, I didn’t realise when it started to take the whole of me. I was so arrogant about my fitness and discipline that I didn’t see how I was harming myself. Cigarettes are the worst form of addiction. The problem is, it is acceptable in the society — if someone smokes, no one calls him or her an idiot, and also, it is easily available. The only tip would be, keep saying no, and eventually it works.