Life events that clicked.....

Pursuing a sport seriously , say in Mumbai,   or for that matter , traveling out of town for it,  is  , to say the least, NOT an easy thing. 

For her, daily training was the simpler part.  A great pool  with a great coach within 10 minutes jogging distance,  a two wheeler mother who daily took her for her workouts  of several kilometres in the water,  a very very strict coach, great fellow swimmers, and they would rush back at 9 pm, dripping hair,windbreakers and huge bags held precariously on the two wheeler, revving up the incline.

Going for competitions was another thing. Traveling in the Mumbai suburban trains, and one always carried sufficient water, fluids, and assorted  fresh cooked carb foods, boiled eggs, bananas, not to mention an old bedsheet to spread on the ground around the pool. Insisting on warmups, inside and outside the water,  avoiding wilful hunger pangs, keeping one ear attuned to announcements of her events, while she met her long lost friends from other pools;  mobilizing by the other end of the pool to cheer oneself hoarse beseeching the child to  "Pull !  Pull !", and sometimes, both being delighted with the result.  Travel in Mumbai was short but unpredictably crowded,  not meant for lugging big kit bags and food along with two little wilful girls, and you had to ensure they exited the train with you through the crowds, and didn't leave anything behind.

Out of town trips for meets, were even more unpredictable.

 Some were very much within the cities, but some were very much on some terrible undulating outskirts in the middle of nowhere, where you lugged a tired child and heavy wet bags for huge distances in the evening trafficless gloom , till you spied a ricksha and prayed that he agreed to take you back to civilization.  If he did not, you simply pushed on, luggage and tired child  in tow. There were usually, simply no arrangements by the organizers  to drop competitors at the nearest bus or train station.  Most arrangments for food and lodging pertained to the officials.  

Some were  very much in the hinterland of the state, and the official government  arrangements assumed you would be travelling with bedding, clothes and buckets and tumblers.  Overrun  by hundreds of swimmers wandering around with cycling shorts and tees (amidst the wandering local pigs trying to figure out what all the excitement was), something unheard of in that town, the pool gallery would be hugely packed daily, with folks rushing in to enjoy sights of folks in speedos, racing each other. Staying in whatever available hotel, giving pieces of one's mind to  staff who knocked at odd times, and occasionally simply changing hotels in anger.  The electricity going off at the station crowded with 200 swimmers waiting for two trains , and having to approximately board the right train.

And then there were the 5 km Sea Races. In Mumbai.

Held in the dirtiest area of the Sea, at The Gateway of India.  Usually packed with catamarans and boats, diesel smells,  and oil splotches in the water.  A small shamiana enclosure(without a roof) , ideal for 10-15 girls , but used by 7-8 times as many, meant for changing. And the mother carrying two 5 litre huge bottles of water from home, 40 kilometres away ,  since showers at the Gateway were nonexistent . The daughter emerging 3rd, coming out of the water, studded with dissolved fuel, dirt and assorted black junk stuff , and the mother emptying the two lugged water containers over her head. And then in a sudden discovery,  some of the girls rushing to the posh loo of the Taj Mahal Hotel nearby in desperation, after the race.

There have been sulks, arguments, questions, whoops, cribs, guffaws, tears and stampings of feet, over the years, and the mother has had to maintain  somewhat of a earth anchor through it all.

Today, for the mother,   for many years,  evenings have not meant the pool,  her daughter's practice , or managing the transportation. The daughter is on her own there. In a kind of zone.  She still does workouts, but  competitions are passé and old hat. The new buzzword is coaching.  Encouraging older women and  young children to swim, under her own coach's watchful eye.

Things like work and Facebook appear to be more attractive.  Lots of friends and photos.

The mother, in her own old fashioned way, is also on Facebook.

And she got a notification yesterday. Asking for a confirmation of something on her daughter's Timeline. 

Typically she didn't understand what was happening, and how she came into the scheme of things.

The daughter leaned over from her laptop, clicked on some link in the notification,  turned to her and said, " You were so much and always a part of all this.  You need to confirm  this , so it appears on my Timeline....."

The mother looked  confusedly at the screen, absorbing the words "Life event" , went back so many years in her mind , and  clicked.

The young girl had tagged her. 

It was a photograph of a very young girl, with her very first medal haul in November 1996........ 

Praising the dark, and looking for light, sportingly..... मना तुझा रंग कसा ?

At first they lived in an old house by the lake. Just four flats. Lots of places to explore, chasing cows bent on destroying the garden,and monkeys on trees, hissing at her with teeth bared. But, careening down the two-wheeler entry ramp to the building, wearing shorts, and a blue chaddar representing a superman cape, was then the supreme activity of choice.

There was a sloping entry into the lake close by, which was restricted by a bunch of bars, designed to stop cars , unwittingly left in neutral gear, from quietly sliding into the lake. When she was 4, she was convinced that the bars were actually her personal preserve , for doing tumbles and turns across the top horizontal bar. Folks out for a walk in the evening would stop by and have serious conversations with her, as she swung , feet up and head down; some would occasionally offer to give the quick short shove required to turn across the bar, applaud , and carry on.

Cycling was another trial. The road there , was reasonably clear of traffic, but had an alarming unpredictable bovine population that would emerge in dark lumbering glory , from the woods, on to the paved road. And so she learned to cycle , always at a hurried speed, with one shoulder raised, as a result of trying to look for emerging cows from the corner of her eye.

By and by, they shifted to a semi high rise ; well, semi by today's standards. 6 floors. When she was little, she would dash up the stairs to see if she could defeat her parents coming up in the elevator. Her school shared a wall with the building, and the admired thing was to enter the school by the wall, instead of the school gate.

She joined dance classes, and karate, and her folks delighted in seeing the karate class doing their fitness practice on the school grounds. Early morning table tennis classes introduced her to the concept of warm-ups. Her persistent cough , earlier attributed to imbibing secret quantities of tamarinds and ice creams , miraculously went away.

Then she joined swimming. Today, 13 years later, has remained with it. Lots of workouts, several competitions, moderate successes, moderate disappointments, but behind it all is the great enjoyment she gets out of the training of swimming.

Many times, it is a case of either or both parents being in that sport. In her case, although both her parents were in sports when young, it was never swimming, but more like racket and bat sports.

There are two ways people take interest in sports. Serious sports.

They simply love the sport.

Or its a cool calculated move a la BCCI , designed to optimize returns of more types than one.

Some parents have unlimited resources. Some have unlimited imagination. Some more, are highly resourceful in an unlimited way. Some parents have unlimited time. Some make , unlimited time for their child, when it is a question of training.

And so we have Bindra who had it all laid out for him, but he did his part 200%. Then there is Sania, who has reached great heights, with dedicated help from both her parents and assorted sponsorships. Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi had fathers who pointed them into the path, and stayed to guide them through. Saina Nehwal, who showed a lot of spunk, and Anjali Bhagwat whose folks gave them so much support . Then there are the Bhiwani Boxers.

There are so many, whose parents had nothing to give but mental support. Difficult travel, unsatisfactory arrangements, irregular scheduling, lack of sponsorships, lack of a semblance of support from associations purporting to support their particular sport. An alarming amount of officials, who miraculously appear at international meets, and disappear into babudom later. Selection systems based on criteria that have nothing to do with the sport.

This cannot go on....

Our communities are not sensitized to sports. The Times of India on its sports page will desist from giving news about a local state level swimming meet, or a schools table-tennis tournament; but the pride of place will be given to the questionable exploits of the girlfriend of one of UK's professional footballers, complete with photos in missing clothes. It is there every single day .

Captains of industry, who open up their profit laden treasuries to support something like Mood Indigo, hesitate, when requested to consider sponsoring a sports meet at the same educational institute, for a fraction of the cost. They want visibility for their brand, but not while the hard work is in progress. Like all those who hanker after power, they want it easy......

And the strange thing is, as the aforementioned girl realized, that status and/or education really has nothing to do with people's attitudes. Towards sports, and the practice of it.

Late one summer evening, she is back from swimming practice, full of beans, trailing her paraphernalia, running ahead of her mother , to stop the elevator which is about to take off.

There is a couple inside . Both doctorates. Middle aged. 2 kids. With each child more academically brilliant than the other. They move and make place for the girl and her mother. Smile indulgently. (Some folks think "patronizingly" is the word that really fits). At the girl, who is busy fixing the sipper bottle that has just fallen out of her bag; swimming paraphernalia, speedos, and the like are very expensive, and this nice automatically-closing-sipper-bottle has been sent by an indulgent uncle from the land of Michael Phelps.

They look up at the girl's mother. And bring forth the question which they have been wanting to ask all along, ever since they started noticing this girl doing her swimming , since several years.

"Why do you send your daughter for swimming ? Ap ko nahi lagta ki wo kali ho jayegi? (Dont you realize that she will turn black/dark ?)"

Speechlessly, I rested my case then.

I helplessly, rest my case now.

And you really wanted to know why we have only ******one individual medal at the Olympics in the last so many years ? 

****** Attaboy Vijendar,  prove me wrong....(august 21, 12:50 pm)