Sporting a Culture of Neglect

It's 6.30 on a very nice and cool morning at Central Stadium, Trivandrum. Thanks to the heavy monsoon showers the previous evening, the sun is out shining through a thin layer of clouds, making the morning splendid. The stadium is abuzz with a range of sport activities. Sprinters are working hard on their routine, while footballers are playing off their shots. In one corner cricketers are busy with their net practice while the Karate team is tensely practising combat techniques. All this appears to be a great setting for the 1^st National Kalaripayattu Championship that are being held here.

Just then one of the Kalaripayatru Championship participants gets injured in a practice routine. He has tried a complex maneuver and found a toe nail dangling out.  Its not major but sufficiently bad to put the fellow out of contention if his injury is not treated soon. When I ask around for a first aid kit, none have it. I presume the main office would have one.  Wrong assumption. For the policeman who is sitting at the desk there, not a sports official mind you, pleasantly responds:  “But office opens after 10 a.m. only!” I run around town and find the necessary supplies to deal with this minor emergency.

This is not a stadium in the boon-docks, mind you. It is right next to the Secretariat of the Kerala Government. I bet the large window in the Sports Secretary's office opens right into this sprawling campus, and the officer loves to stand by it while enjoying chai every morning. The view is nice no? Not really. Not if you notice that the P. T. Usha (Athletics) Coaching Centre is in shambles. Remember her? From the 1980s when all of India's Olympic medal hopes rested on her shoulders alone?

This is when I start comparing with the hundreds of crores (millions) of rupees that are invested in cricket. To spruce up the Tendulkar Stand, the Cuttack Cricket Club, the Kumble this and the Dravid that. Then there are these multi million money churning tournaments to benefit Border and Gavakar ! (Are these guys so broke?)

I compare because I have not heard in recent years a similar effort for P. T. Usha. The only lore that is being sung for field and non-cricket athletes in India is in Bollyhood's offering; more recently of the (sadly) one and only Milkha Singh.

When one walks into the main stadium in the capital city of a State, its not much to expect a warm and welcoming feeling, especially if you are in “God's Own Country!” But take one look at the P. T. Usha Coaching Centre and you know Hell would have better comforts. The ground floor of the building is filled with desks and cubicles with clerks peeping from behind their desks heaped with files, looking dead bored. Look for a toilet and you will find a corner room for women, the presence of which is evident by the stench from miles away. Men, I guess, find any corner useful. Greeting you as you enter the stadium's main gate is an overflowing pile of garbage.

When it rained last evening, footballers braved the heavy showers and practised in the soggy field. It was fun watching them have fun in the slushy, muddied field. But if one were to practice like that every day, for it rains here every day here during the four monsoon months, how and what exactly does one practice? If this is how footballers train to be national players in one of the few States where the sport is popular, imagine what it is like for this sport in, say, Cuddalore in Andhra Pradesh for instance?

P. T. Usha would moan in despair if she were to visit this centre, as it could be a traumatic throwback to the horrible conditions she braved to be India's famous athlete. The living quarters of the resident athletes which is housed in this building is dingy, damp and unlit: one can barely make out that the dormitories are stacked with rows of cots and window grills are covered with clothes and underwear hung out to dry. Surely, field athletes don't deserve a dhobi allowance, do they? They aren't cricketers after all.

I have never seen a cricket stadium in such a hopeless state. Almost every cricket stadium in the country has artificial turf laid out now, all over the vast expanse, and the grounds are so clean and well maintained that a ball will roll nicely as if it were on a billiards table. And should it rain, droves of groundsmen will run to cover the field and mop up the mess. Should a cricketer pull a hamstring, or develop a tennis elbow, even while in practice, will the country even stop talking and worrying about the fellow?

At places like the Central Stadium of Trivandrum, athletes can skid, fall and have their limbs splintered, and there is not even a first aid kit to call for. The tragedy of India is that we have made it a habit to talk of our glorious past, and do nothing about it.  Its an escapists' approach.  

Kalaripayattu, considered the mother of all martial arts, and which originated in Kerala, would be the most apt candidate for celebrating our "glorious"  past. Its 1^st National Championship surely would have been a great setting to prove our collective intent in retaining traditional folk art forms.  Sadly, all that Kerala offered Kalari athletes in Trivandrum was a hard concrete floor, a far cry from the "wet red clay meant to give a cushioning effect and prevent injury".  It is this kind of floor that Kalari athletes have practised on every day for years, and in the Championship have to be wary because they are greeted by a hard concrete floor.  The athletes tend to ignore these 'small things' and get excited meeting others who has similarly practiced hard. But when you see Championship participants sweeping up the basketball floors so that their events can begin, what can you say.

The hard fact is that the Kalari competitions were held on hard, concrete, floors, because there is no State support at all for this ancient sport! No, not even the wooden floors that a college in a remote Chinese or East European village will take for granted in playing basketball or badminton, not to speak of the unimaginable sports facilities in any average US, Canadian or South African university campuses. On such hard concrete floors Kalari athletes demonstrate their extraordinary skills and combat to win; performing high kicks, spar with sword and shield, perform terrifying acts with the Urmi - flexible sword. These are the very brave at work here and they come in all age groups: little kids, teenagers and young men and women. They are all busy doing their best to have time to worry about the utter lack of infrastructure, even at the National Championship levels!

It appears that in the land of Kalaripayattu's origin, there is not one thing the State has done to ensure that the National Championship becomes an event to remember. Even when the event is being held right next to the seat of power. The least it could have done is to ensure drinking water and clean toilets were provided!

This considering the undeniable fact that most Kalari participants have come from very remote villages, where they have strived to excel only by the grit of their determination, and despite economic hardships. This was horribly evident from a very sad sight of athletes wandering the streets of Trivandrum late in the night in search of a place to stay, something they could afford. They could not find anything cheap within the vicinity of the Central Stadium, a 'high class' neighbourhood, and so ended up five in a room meant for two in one of the nearby hotels. One can only imagine how much sleep they got. No scholarship or corporate sponsorship reaches the doorsteps of these highly deserving candidates, for there is no money that can be made from this sport. 

Our cricketers, like Sreeshant, meanwhile, are so spoilt, and so bored with life, that all they can think of is to hang out in boring malls buying shoes, and show them off in boring bars with perhaps equally bored women. Come on Navjyot Singh Siddhu and Sachin Tendulkar, do something as MPs! Dhoni, Kapil Dev, Leander Paes, Ravi Shastri, get out there in the middle, do something about this state of affairs, and not only for your sport. For all some athletes are asking for is nothing more than a clean toilet in a sports stadium.