Picture a typical afternoon in a Delhi neighbourhood. Retired men gathered in parks, talking about their aches and their children's careers, afternoon naps after lunch, followed by evenings stretched out in front of the television. 

It is a rhythm that society has scripted for those past 60 — slow down, settle in, let the world hand things over to the young.

Mahipal Singh did not get that memo. Or rather, he got a different one from his doctor.

A wake-up call after diabetes

In 2021, at 60 years old, freshly retired from years of running a business after a career in the Indian Navy, Singh was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. It was the kind of news that reshapes everything it touches: diet, energy, routine, and the sense of what is still possible. 

For many people, a diagnosis like this becomes the point at which one chapter closes and a more careful life begins.

For Singh, now 65, it turned out to be where something new started altogether.

He began running — not out of joy or ambition, but out of necessity. His........

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