Dr Vijay Malur, scaling heights

The rippling muscles and the stylish tee hardly betray Dr Vijay Malur’s age. And when you watch him run 4 km every day and exercise at a park in Bangalore’s Jayanagar area, any guess about his age would be way off the mark.

The former doctor of sports medicine turned 64 on September 19 and is preparing for a 21-day trek to the base camp of Mt Everest. That’s a climb of 18,640 feet. He has already been there once before — in 2003, soon after recovering from a quadruple heart by-pass surgery.

Dr Malur, who shuttles between his home in the United States (where he lives with his wife, daughter, son and grandchildren) and his siblings’ home in Bangalore, is among the few people with heart diseases to reach the camp.

This year, he was scheduled to make a second trip but a new heart complication in January meant he had to postpone his plans to 2008. That only meant more time to get ready for his trek. The regimen is strict: cold water showers, one meal a day, and sleeping on the floor. “I am not the norm. I would not recommend what I do to others. Everyone has got their own mountains to climb — though it could be mental, physical or spiritual,” he says philosophically. “Many people get burdened by age. Life actually begins after 55 — you don’t have to work hard, you have time but you have to conquer your fears,” he says.

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