He was crouched on the edge of the 2inch thick red line that marked the start. His right leg was stretched behind. His left leg right on the line collinear with his fingers of both his hands. His sinews were frim, nerves were taut , brows tightened. He didnt care to look at his fiercest rival alongside. He had done that each time in the past 2 years hoping to find a weakness in his rival. This time he was confident of his efforts. He knew he couldnt have done more than what he had already. The wait was always irritating for him. He just wanted it all to get over.

But today he was surprisingly calm. He felt detached from the situation, from the atmosphere, from his rivals and ...... from himself. Then he heard the pistol shot. His ears heard the sound, and nerves carried signals to his arms and legs to swing them into motion. His body involuntarily darted ahead. All this while, he was still detached from his body. He felt as if he didnt belong to it, he wasnt the body, he wasnt the man, he wasnt life inside the body. He was something more than that, he something other that. All the strivings of his life, the unhappiness, the jealousness, the anger everything just fell apart at that very moment when his body was running in front of a million eyes.

He didnt care if we won or lost. Because the truth had already dawned on him. Buddha found his freedom sitting under a tree. He had done at that point.

Right at the last lap, his body was second behind another man whom he had considered his rival till a while back. He was a mere spectator who couldnt care less about the outcome. And then his body just stopped then and there and started strolling. He reached the finish line the last, but he felt the biggest brush of happiness, for this was "Victory", the sweetest of them all. The Victory of Enlightenment