This 85-year-old runs 10 kilometres before breakfast, and the rest of his day only gets busier from there on. Long before the sun climbs fully over Natun Gaon, a village in Jagiroad in Assam’s Morigaon district, Andhuram Das is already tying his laced for a run that most people half his age would not attempt. What follows next surprises almost everyone who hears it for the first time.
The Run That Never Stopped
Around 5.30 am, while Natun Gaon is still waking up, Das steps out onto the village roads and begins his run. Ten kilometres is the distance he covers, not occasionally but as part of a fixed routine, a habit so deeply set that missing it feels stranger to him than doing it. When he finishes, he does not collapse into rest the way many would expect. He cools down properly, picks up the morning newspaper, and reads it without glasses. Then he heads toward the ground, where a fresh batch of young athletes is waiting for him.
None of this began as an old-age fitness experiment. It is simply part of a life that has always revolved around movement, discipline, and teaching. For the children who train under him, watching an 85 year-old man outpace joggers, decades younger, is not a novel thing. It is the clearest lesson in consistency they will ever receive, delivered without a single word.
Bringing Kho Kho to a Corner of Assam
The story of Das’ coaching dates back to the 1960s, a period when a sport like Kho Kho was barely known across large parts of Assam. As a working schoolteacher, he believed that sport could build a child’s character just as thoroughly as any classroom lesson. So he began forming teams from scratch, marking out practice grounds in open fields, and organising sessions wherever space allowed.
Over the next six decades, Das personally trained more than 1,000 students in Kho Kho and Kabaddi. Many of these students went on to represent their district, then their state, and in some cases, the country. Because of his early and patient efforts, Kho Kho became familiar in the schools of Morigaon long before any organised state-level promotion of the sport took hold. What he built, essentially with his own hands and time, was a small but lasting culture of indigenous sport in rural Assam.
Still Racing the Clock at Eighty Five
Coaching others has never stopped Das from competing with himself. Even after retiring from his position as a schoolteacher, he continued to take part in masters athletics, running long-distance events while still managing his coaching duties on the side. At an age when many people quietly accept that certain things are no longer possible for them, Das kept testing his own stamina against the stopwatch, refusing to treat age as a verdict.
December 2025 added a new chapter to this long record. At the 31st Assam Inter District Masters Athletics Championship, held at Khirod Baruah Stadium in Morigaon from the 18th to the 21st of December 2025, Das competed in the men’s 85-plus category. He returned home with two bronze medals, one from the 5,000-meter race and another from the 10,000-meter race. His early morning runs, it turned out, were never just symbolic gestures. They translated directly into performance on the track when it mattered.
What Those Medals Actually Represent
Two bronze medals may sound modest against the scale of national or international sport, yet the story behind them carries far more weight than the medal itself. Each medal represents decades spent walking between the classroom and the playground, persuading uncertain parents to let their children play instead of heading straight home after school, and coaxing shy students into trying running, jumping, and chasing for the first time.
For the children and young adults currently training under him, watching their own coach stand on a podium at an interdistrict masters meet delivers a quiet but powerful message. Effort is never wasted, even if results arrive slowly. Sporting achievement, they learn from him, is not something that belongs only to the young. A modest village ground, given enough patience, can become a genuine site of accomplishment.
Passing On More Than One Thousand Legacies
Over roughly sixty years of coaching, Das has guided more than one thousand students through the fundamentals of Kho Kho and Kabaddi, teaching them speed, agility, teamwork, and fair play along the way. A considerable number of these students went on to represent their districts and, later, the state of Assam at higher levels of competition, carrying forward the discipline they had first absorbed under his watch.
Some of his former students now bring their own children to train with him, trusting that the coach who once pushed them to run faster will do the same for the next generation. His example shows how a single committed teacher, working in one small village, can leave a mark on the sporting culture of an entire region that outlasts his own playing career many times over.
A Life Kept Deliberately Simple
Das keeps his daily life uncomplicated. He wakes early, runs, reads, eats lightly, and spends the remaining hours between his family and the training ground. He has kept illness at bay, not through any specialised medical program but through the steady discipline of daily exercise and an active routine that he has never allowed to lapse. His life suggests that preventive health does not always require an expensive gym membership or a professionally designed fitness plan.
At a time when ageing is often discussed in terms of fear and physical decline, Das offers an entirely different picture, one built around continuity, contribution, and a quiet form of courage. To the people around him in Morigaon, he is not simply “a fit old man.” He is living proof that a sense of purpose can keep a person young at heart long after the years themselves have piled up.
Why This Story Deserves Attention Now
The story of Andhuram Das matters because it ties together three themes India needs to hear more about: respect for teachers, the revival of indigenous sport, and the possibility of an active old age. As a retired teacher, he reminds people that education never really stops with the textbook. As a coach of Kho Kho and Kabaddi, he keeps traditional Indian games alive at a time when they risk being forgotten. As an 85 year-old competitive runner, he quietly dismantles assumptions about what senior citizens are capable of doing.
Building this from nothing was never easy for him. When Das first began promoting Kho Kho in the 1960s, rural families often viewed organised play as a distraction from farm work, household duties, or academics. There were no dedicated grounds, so he improvised with open fields and whatever school premises he could access. Institutional backing for indigenous sports was thin at best, which meant fewer tournaments, almost no funding, and very little structured pathway for rural players hoping to reach district or state competitions. Many families in Morigaon’s villages could not easily afford travel, shoes, or kits, so Das often adjusted training schedules around the practical realities of his students’ lives.
In a small stadium in Morigaon, an older man dressed in running gear might not draw the attention that international sports stars command. But for the children watching from the stands, he represents something more durable than any headline. He is proof that perseverance outweighs the limitations of age or geography. His medals may only be bronze, but his influence on more than a thousand young athletes carries a weight closer to gold.
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