“Be tall chetta”, Jayesh commanded me with his subtle firmness. He could only afford that controlled indignation as I am “chettan” for him, an elder brother for “mallus”, the people of Kerala, India’s God’s Own country. Jayesh and I were running. One of those Saturday morning runs at Delhi’s Rose Gardens a few winters ago. I wasn’t amused and I suddenly stopped. Now he is getting angry; I could see that. But I was genuinely confused about what he said. Did you say ‘Run tall’, I asked him. He said ‘yes I did’, his anger faded away and a smile started descending on his face. But, at 6 feet 2 inches I thought I was way too tall for Indian standards. So, I should be running tall. Jayesh nodded his head in total disagreement. ‘No, you don’t’. ‘You should have been trained by my Pinto sir’, he said . Now who is that I asked thinking it could be his physical education teacher. That was when Jayesh first told me about Alfred Pinto – the ‘short, tall man’ who teaches his students how to stand tall, walk tall and run tall. A story that taught me ‘height is a state of mind’.

At 5 feet 3 inches, Alfred Pinto is short, dark and muscular. The quintessential trainer at the famed sports college in Trivandrum. His voice too had a contrast, its depth disproportionate to his physicality. A voice that could reach as far as someone faulting a step a good 400 meters away. And for all the boys and girls on the ground that meant command. Never to be questioned. ‘Be tall’, the short man’s roaring voice was meant focus first and then a winning streak for boys at that 5am run. Many of Alfred Pinto’s boys went on to play nationals. Jayesh too was a blessed one. With all that hard training on his side, the athletics made him an amazing badminton player.

Overtime, Alfred Pinto became an invisible presence in our morning runs, all the more when we were on running ABC’s. Running tall needed both hands to be held loosely at wrists and never to be raised above the shoulder. It needed holding your head erect, shoulders straight, arms close to body, land on your toes, land closer to midstance with least impact solely on the heel. And a lot more. I was learning all of that and more from Alfred Pinto, through Jayesh. But the learning wasn’t about running tall alone. It was a lot more about being tall, and being Alfred Pinto, for height, he taught us, is a state of mind.