MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Last week, an Indian man who was widely recognized as the world's oldest marathon runner died at the age of 114. He did not die of age. He was hit by a speeding car while crossing the road. It brought back the spotlight on road safety in India, where authorities say accidents kill more than a hundred thousand people every year. NPR's Omkar Khandekar reports on the life and death of the Sikh farmer who achieved worldwide fame as the Turbaned Tornado.
OMKAR KHANDEKAR, BYLINE: It was the winter of 1999, London, when running coach Harmandar Singh took on a student who was older than his father. Fauja Singh was 89. And for their first training session, he showed up in a three-piece suit.
HARMANDAR SINGH: I sort of had to tell him that if he was running down the road wearing a three-piece suit, there is a possibility that the police will say, what are you running from?
KHANDEKAR: The elderly man was running from his past.
H SINGH: He had quickly told me about the trauma that he had with his family - losing his daughter, wife and son in quick succession.
KHANDEKAR: Harmandar says Fauja Singh was the best student he's had. Fauja's years working on the rice farms of India's Punjab state had made him tough. He trained every day, trusted his coach fully and couldn't tell a mile from a kilometer.
H SINGH: And I used that to my advantage because when there were several miles left, I used to tell him they were kilometers.
KHANDEKAR: Starting in the year 2000, Fauja completed nine full marathons and several shorter ones. He traveled the world from China to Canada, walking and jogging in his bright yellow turban.
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KHANDEKAR: In Toronto, in 2011, he became the oldest person to finish a marathon at age 100.
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KHANDEKAR: The media loved him. Adidas featured him in their Impossible Is Nothing ad campaign. A children's writer published a book on him. Then, last Monday came this.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And we're now getting some breaking news. Punjab's Turbaned Tornado, Fauja Singh, no more - legendary marathon runner dies in hit and run.
KHANDEKAR: He was crossing the road to get to his rice fields when a speeding car knocked him over. His death was the headline news here in India. And the tragedy also renewed attention on road safety in India, where authorities say fatal accidents take over 150,000 lives every year. The local traffic chief Manjit Singh says young drivers today drive like they're in an action movie. But he says the pedestrians are at fault, too.
MANJIT SINGH: (Speaking Hindi).
KHANDEKAR: He says the Indian pedestrians' mentality is, let's take a shortcut. Fauja Singh's family says he would often jump over a traffic median to get to his rice fields. But Rohit Baluja, director of the Indian Institute of Road Traffic Education, says there's a reason why pedestrians take such risks.
ROHIT BALUJA: When we investigate accidents - we've done over about 8,000 such cases - we find that almost 30% to 33% are because of failures off the road.
KHANDEKAR: Road construction has boomed in the 11 years Narendra Modi has been India's prime minister. Many of these roads, Baluja says, cut across villages but lack warning signs or pedestrian underpasses. Having these, he says, could have prevented Fauja's death.
BALUJA: We build roads for the vehicles. We do not consider the vulnerable road users.
KHANDEKAR: Fauja Singh's body did not fail him till his last day. He took no medicines, didn't even use a walking stick. His biographer Khushwant Singh says he once asked him if he ever thought about dying.
KHUSHWANT SINGH: (Speaking Hindi).
KHANDEKAR: And Fauja told him he was afraid of dying because now he was fully living his life.
Omkar Khandekar, NPR News, Jalandhar.
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