A Sporting Life
Hearing the Indian national anthem performed in an Olympic stadium after 28 years, I was transported - by this unexpected moment of national pride - to an Olympics in the future, when I would be one amongst many hundred Indian fathers applauding our children winning medals for India.
During my school life, our Dad's and Papa's were always on the sidelines watching matches, making us feel like a dream team. If we lost everyone was blamed including the referee, an uneven playing field, bad luck and God too had to take it on the chin...but certainly not their sons! If we won, our Pa's - if they were poetically inclined - would have immortalised our sporting exploits in ballads. What made this special was the presence of Olympian fathers like Leslie Claudius and Vece Paes as cheer leaders.
Growing up in a familial environment with exposure to diverse sports, I too nurtured dreams of pursuing professional basketball and cycling for Team India in the Tour de France but in a socialist India some decades ago such spirit was incongruent with opportunity, unless you were in the army or a government undertaking.
My earliest experiences of sport were varied as camera angles; first watching my mother coach the erstwhile Mysore basketball team to victory from atop Dad’s shoulders, then being thrown into the depths of the murky Dhakuria Lakes in Calcutta- aged 5- by a lifeguard, serving as my introduction to aquatics.
Rishabh and Ahan, my sons now ten and nearly nine, enjoyed a more benign baptism aged 18 months, cradled in my palms across a clear swimming pool. In a matter of weeks they demonstrated their definite preference for an aquatic life. Aged four, they were cycling round the block and a year later winning cardboard ‘golds’ for athletics at school.
Having learned more about teamwork, camaraderie, competition and failure from the sports arena than the classroom, I was resolute in sharing with my lads the experience of sport.
Discovering a new sport continues every summer. Rishabh’s overconfidence has met with comeuppance; playing with forty aggressive children fighting for a football transformed his attitude for the better when learning cricket. Ahan’s reticence while learning basketball conceded to brimming confidence under the guidance of a paternal hockey coach.
Some years earlier, touching 40, I had embarked on a journey of mind and body, learning Kalaripayattu - the ancient martial art - that young boys in Kerala start at 7.
The first weeks of training made me feel unhealthy, ungainly, awkward and unfit. My bones crackled like a bamboo grove in a storm and I discovered muscles and parts of the anatomy through aches and pains. Ofcourse I wanted to throw in the towel on a daily basis but the battlefield expertise of Kalaripayattu instilled in me a mental toughness. I learned to transform negative energies into a reservoir of positive energy waiting to be creatively unleashed at my command.
While swimming for fun remained a constant for Rishabh and Ahan commenced, training under Nisha Millet ignited a passion. Simultaneously, they too were introduced to Kalaripayattu, similarly protesting, unable to understand the intangibles of the torturous learning curve. Now they comprehend the importance of focus that the challenges and solitude of competition demand, with failure not an option be it the classroom or the swimming pool.
Six months later, significantly enhanced performances in the swimming pool whetted by a voracious appetite for competition have them training daily at the Basavangudi Aquatic Centre - an oasis of Olympic excellence. Now Team Kamath has Olympics 2016 in our crosshairs.
What might seem unconventional and unorthodox is actually returning to the psycho-physiological regimens devised by the Dronacharyas of yore to produce Arjunas and Eklayvas and by the Chinese to produce sport persons of excellence.
The ‘spin off’ is in academics with more learning achieved in less time affording the boys more time for recreation. Term exams or not, they still have time to swim, cycle and play a game of pool with each other while their friends are quarantined in study.
Our national anthem should have resonated alternately with China’s in every stadium. Sport cannot be treated as a means to obtain a college admission or access a job quota but a respectable profession. In order to do that by 2020, we have to re-acquaint our children with.
Not only would we have contributed to providing our children happier childhoods in times of familial disequilibrium but we would have participated in that process of distilling five hundred of the finest for Olympics 2020.
Grandmothers still excite children with the exploits of Arjuna and Eklavya yet we treat sport as a pariah profession – an avenue of mobility for the disadvantaged. Dronacharyas are considered academic non-achievers who coach to survive, while the ‘physical’ is the first expendable from an education syllabus
The modern Olympics have transposed contests in national supremacy from the battlefield to the sports arena Рsans bloodshed. Today, the cr̬me de la cr̬me represent their nations as indices of mental toughness and quality of national character.
From being a noble way of life we have desecrated sport as a means to obtain college admissions and public sector jobs through quotas, thus pushing our future Olympic potential to ‘burn out’ with 300 medals won by age 15! Otherwise, we aggressively encourage our sons to train as cash cows for the cricket machine, mesmerised by the material successes of men in multi-colour.
To be counted amongst the super powers by Olympics 2020 we have to metamorphose from a country of crabs and forge a national character of impeccable quality to distil five hundred of the finest.
We all do not have champions for sons or daughters but we can mobilise with our resources behind those parents with champions, and participate in bringing gold and glory to our country.
During my school life, our Dad's and Papa's were always on the sidelines watching matches, making us feel like a dream team. If we lost everyone was blamed including the referee, an uneven playing field, bad luck and God too had to take it on the chin...but certainly not their sons! If we won, our Pa's - if they were poetically inclined - would have immortalised our sporting exploits in ballads. What made this special was the presence of Olympian fathers like Leslie Claudius and Vece Paes as cheer leaders.
Growing up in a familial environment with exposure to diverse sports, I too nurtured dreams of pursuing professional basketball and cycling for Team India in the Tour de France but in a socialist India some decades ago such spirit was incongruent with opportunity, unless you were in the army or a government undertaking.
My earliest experiences of sport were varied as camera angles; first watching my mother coach the erstwhile Mysore basketball team to victory from atop Dad’s shoulders, then being thrown into the depths of the murky Dhakuria Lakes in Calcutta- aged 5- by a lifeguard, serving as my introduction to aquatics.
Rishabh and Ahan, my sons now ten and nearly nine, enjoyed a more benign baptism aged 18 months, cradled in my palms across a clear swimming pool. In a matter of weeks they demonstrated their definite preference for an aquatic life. Aged four, they were cycling round the block and a year later winning cardboard ‘golds’ for athletics at school.
Having learned more about teamwork, camaraderie, competition and failure from the sports arena than the classroom, I was resolute in sharing with my lads the experience of sport.
Discovering a new sport continues every summer. Rishabh’s overconfidence has met with comeuppance; playing with forty aggressive children fighting for a football transformed his attitude for the better when learning cricket. Ahan’s reticence while learning basketball conceded to brimming confidence under the guidance of a paternal hockey coach.
Some years earlier, touching 40, I had embarked on a journey of mind and body, learning Kalaripayattu - the ancient martial art - that young boys in Kerala start at 7.
The first weeks of training made me feel unhealthy, ungainly, awkward and unfit. My bones crackled like a bamboo grove in a storm and I discovered muscles and parts of the anatomy through aches and pains. Ofcourse I wanted to throw in the towel on a daily basis but the battlefield expertise of Kalaripayattu instilled in me a mental toughness. I learned to transform negative energies into a reservoir of positive energy waiting to be creatively unleashed at my command.
While swimming for fun remained a constant for Rishabh and Ahan commenced, training under Nisha Millet ignited a passion. Simultaneously, they too were introduced to Kalaripayattu, similarly protesting, unable to understand the intangibles of the torturous learning curve. Now they comprehend the importance of focus that the challenges and solitude of competition demand, with failure not an option be it the classroom or the swimming pool.
Six months later, significantly enhanced performances in the swimming pool whetted by a voracious appetite for competition have them training daily at the Basavangudi Aquatic Centre - an oasis of Olympic excellence. Now Team Kamath has Olympics 2016 in our crosshairs.
What might seem unconventional and unorthodox is actually returning to the psycho-physiological regimens devised by the Dronacharyas of yore to produce Arjunas and Eklayvas and by the Chinese to produce sport persons of excellence.
The ‘spin off’ is in academics with more learning achieved in less time affording the boys more time for recreation. Term exams or not, they still have time to swim, cycle and play a game of pool with each other while their friends are quarantined in study.
Our national anthem should have resonated alternately with China’s in every stadium. Sport cannot be treated as a means to obtain a college admission or access a job quota but a respectable profession. In order to do that by 2020, we have to re-acquaint our children with.
Not only would we have contributed to providing our children happier childhoods in times of familial disequilibrium but we would have participated in that process of distilling five hundred of the finest for Olympics 2020.
Grandmothers still excite children with the exploits of Arjuna and Eklavya yet we treat sport as a pariah profession – an avenue of mobility for the disadvantaged. Dronacharyas are considered academic non-achievers who coach to survive, while the ‘physical’ is the first expendable from an education syllabus
The modern Olympics have transposed contests in national supremacy from the battlefield to the sports arena Рsans bloodshed. Today, the cr̬me de la cr̬me represent their nations as indices of mental toughness and quality of national character.
From being a noble way of life we have desecrated sport as a means to obtain college admissions and public sector jobs through quotas, thus pushing our future Olympic potential to ‘burn out’ with 300 medals won by age 15! Otherwise, we aggressively encourage our sons to train as cash cows for the cricket machine, mesmerised by the material successes of men in multi-colour.
To be counted amongst the super powers by Olympics 2020 we have to metamorphose from a country of crabs and forge a national character of impeccable quality to distil five hundred of the finest.
We all do not have champions for sons or daughters but we can mobilise with our resources behind those parents with champions, and participate in bringing gold and glory to our country.
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