Book Review: A Shot at History-My Obsessive Journey to Olympic Gold

This is India’s greatest sporting glory ever. To tell it, we need India’s greatest sport writer.

The English language, with all its grace and beauty, does not have words to describe something as colossal as the Olympics. The word “Olympic/Olympian” is used as a metaphor for something grand, perfect and majestic. If that is so, which figure of speech or other literary ornamentation should one use to describe the real Olympics- the quadrennial extravaganza of sporting pinnacle, not the metaphor?

Well, not a problem, if your story is as inspiring as that of Abinav Bindra, India’s first and till now only individual Olympic gold medalist and if your penmanship is as skillful as that of Rohit Brijnath.

“A Shot at History” is an inspiring  story of one man’s journey to be the absolute best in his chosen craft. It is also an ode to the single mindedness of his focus, the depth of his hunger and doggedness of his pursuit.  But most importantly, it is a tribute to something far more elemental and primordial in the human nature: desire. Desire sent man to explore continents across uncharted oceans; it sent us to the moon and to Mars. The very same desire turned a 13 year old prodigy, shooting with flimsy guns under a mango tree, into a World Champion and later an Olympic champion. “A shot at History” is pure desire put to sublime prose.

Bindra’s story starts with acknowledging the role of his parents, family and friends in his success. But that is just like getting the obvious out of the way first. After he starts narrating his journey, there is no looking back and you cannot help but marvel at this deceptively gentle looking boy’s obsession. In the chapter called “The Shooting Days: Trials and Tremors” he gives us a peek into his character. “I approach shooting like a scholar, like I approach life”- he says.  He also expresses his high regard for some cricketing greats like Tendulkar and Dravid, which is admirable since an almost perennial grimace of Olympic athletes in India is the step motherly treatment meted out to them vis-a-vis the cricketers. By doing this, Bindra chooses to rise above the bickering and the mud slinging, above the whining and the complaining. In fact, he takes this status quo very sportingly when he says, “People will never chant my name” and “ We (shooters) are the nerds of sports.” He could easily have turned this book into a long, grumpy, ego talk, like that of Lance Armstrong, or a book of barbs, like that of Kevin Pieterson. But Bindra seems to have and also exudes a maturity far beyond his years. The language used in the book is not self promotional, but self exploratory. You know this guy takes himself and his craft very seriously but he never bores you with monologues on “Me Vs the World” and “My Sacrifices”.

But the theme of this book is his obsession. He went to extreme, almost insane lengths to be the best in his sport. He got the soles of his shoes hand made with rubber from Ferrari tyres. He drank yak milk to improve concentration. He undertook commando training to improve his confidence before the Olympics. He got his brain mapped to subdue the chatter within. Rohit Brijnath’s artistry with the words ensures that the narrative is taut, engaging and keeps building up till the fag end where it reaches the crescendo. And when the moment of reckoning arrives in Beijing in 2008, you almost feel that you are there watching this young man, in his nirvana state, his gaze transfixed on the Bull’s eye, his balance steady like a yogi . With 10 close-to-perfect shots, he  finally manages to tame the beast, slay the dragon in the Land of the Dragons. A culmination of a cherished dream, a childhood fantasy which became an adult ambition and then an obsession.

Bindra also shows his class by not taking pot shots at individual sports officials, politicians and rivals. In doing so, he resists the temptation of attracting controversy which would have helped sales. But that does not deter him from pointing the fallacies in our system as a whole and exposing the self serving attitude of the sports officials in India in general (Read the ironically titled chapter called “Mr. Indian Official: Thanks for Nothing”). Bindra also answers the critics who downplay his achievement by saying that his rich father was able to afford to him all the facilities for training which may not be available to other sports persons in the country.  “I guess the Ambanis and the Tatas never thought of this. Medal for hire for their progeny, that sort of thing”, he writes. Take that !

The book has been written like a painting on a canvas, the various chapters appear contiguous. This makes the narrative fused and repetitive at times since it becomes difficult to differentiate between , say how was Bindra’s performance in Tournament X different from that in Tournament Y. This is the only low point, if we could call it that, of the book.

All in all, I would highly recommend this book to the novice reader, to the sports aficionados and to any  one who wishes to achieve greatness in his craft.

A Conversation Which never Was

Tomorrow, I shall meet her. It has been two days- two long days- since I even caught a glimpse of her. These two days have been tough and even though the rains have already arrived in this part of the country, I am still thirsty.

So tomorrow morning, I will position myself near the stairs which she visits frequently. I will disguise the agitated state of my mind and the ardor in my blood by pretending to read the outdated notices on the adjacent notice-board.  This may also help to avoid suspicious glances. And then, if the astrologer’s column in the morning newspaper predicts that it would be my lucky day, she will make an experience.

I will probably say, “Hi”, feigning surprise, even though God knows how much and for how long my heart had been pining for this moment. She will say, “Hi,” too with a smile which is as infectious as flu and as inspiring as a mirage in a desert.

I will feel emboldened by this small victory and take a cue from her smile to ask, “How was your weekend?”

My conjecture tells me that she will then say, “ My weekend was good fun. I visited this place on the outskirts of the city with the family. I saw that movie….”

I will make efforts to listen with intent, but as much as I try, I am sure I will be distracted. In fact her soliloquy will give me a privileged opportunity to observe her more closely. I will notice how her long scarf flutters in the wind coming from the large windows. I will observe how her almond eyes shine brightly when she talks about her dreams and her ambitions. I will compare her with the ideal of feminity  which I have been carrying in my heart for far too long now. In her words, her gestures and her eyes, I will try to decipher some secret code, some hidden clue which could give a hint of what she thinks about me, about us.

And then she may ask about my weekend. This is where I will have to be extra careful. I will have to walk a tightrope. I cannot afford to look pompous, but I do not want to appear timid as well. I intend to come across as neither too eager, nor too cold and distant. Not only do I wish to show that I am not overly scholastic, but also that I am not puerile and shallow.

May be I will tell her that I thought about her yesterday while driving on the highway, when the wind ruffled my hair and whispered in my ears. I will tell her that I thought about her when I got up in the morning and saw two larks flying against the morning sun, unseparated  in the crests and troughs of their undulating flights, with the nascent sunrays sifting through  their feathers in polka dots. I will tell her that I thought about her when I heard a melodious rhythm as the ring tone of a friend’s cell-phone, and when I saw young couple in an eatery sitting in a desolate corner and just staring into each other’s eyes. I will tell her that I thought about her when I experienced the mundane and the special, saw the eager and the celibate, heard the profane and the classic, felt the indescribable and the unmentionable.

It is all set then.

Tomorrow.

Morning.

Stairs.

So today, I am here. It is morning and I stand close to the stair case, reading notices on the notice board, waiting for her.

And there she comes.

I gather all my courage. I dissimulate a confidence which does not come naturally to me, certainly not in these circumstances. I put my best smile forward and say, “Hi”.

She too says “Hi” with a hint of a smile. And then she leaves. In fact she never stops walking. With the air of a queen, the gait of a doe and the dignity of a lady, she just breezes past me, blissfully unaware of the carnage she has precipitated.

And I, bruised, battered, burnt, broken, carry myself out of that corner, which suddenly seems too tight, before anyone sees me in the most vulnerable of all my moments.

May be I should I have planned better.

May be we are not eighteen anymore.

May be we will never be eighteen again!

On Failure and Meritocracy

I am a fairly optimistic person. "Optimistic" because I take risks in life, but "fairly optimistic" because I do not gamble. I believe in success but not in overnight success. I believe in ambitions, in dreams but not in fantasies. And as a corollary of my tempered-with-caution optimism, I generally never use the phrase ,"In the good old days". I believe that the days ahead of us are going to be better. I believe that my best, your best, our best is yet to come.



But this time, I will make an exception.



So, in the good old days, whenever we saw a destitute suffering on a pavement, a naked torsoed child wailing at the traffic intersection, or an acquaintance who had suffered a personal tragedy, or came across a person who had lost his job, or whose company had gone kaput, our first reaction would be one of sympathy or even a little bit of empathy": "Oh ! Poor guy. Why do bad things happen to good people ! Hard luck !". Even if momentarily, we would sigh collectively with him and try our best to singe our sighs with some degree of pathos. A few good souls among us would even go as far as to pray for him and will try to ease the ache in his heart and the burden on his spirit.



Alas, that seems like ages ago. Human civilization has continued its seemingly inexorable march towards creating "meritocracy". And with increasing meritocratic nature, comes increasing blame on the person. Failure has become very personal now, much more personal than it was ever in the human history. Inevitably, when someone fails, nobody blames it on the circumstances, or his upbringing, or the lack of opportunities or others. In true meritocratic traditions, they blame it on him.



The whole atmosphere becomes rife with snap judgements by arm chair critics. "Oh , he was an idiot , that is why he failed," says one. "Why is he blaming his luck, it was his own incompetence which undid him", chips in another. Add to it the burgeoning individualism of the modern age , where the safety net of family is diminishing, and we have a recipe for disaster.



Failure becomes a quagmire, a quick sand which threatens to engulf his whole existence and swallow him . And the horror of horrors is that everyone believes that he deserved that fate!



This is one of the reasons that the number of suicides and depression cases in many parts of India has reaching high. In India, nowhere is this problem more acute than in IITs. For long, and for mostly correct reasons, IITs have been held as shining examples of a meritocratic society. So, if someone bothches up his life, whether personal or academic, then the failure is very public and the blame lies squarely on his shoulders.



In this post, I am not going to ramble about the ills plaguing the IIT student life. That, I leave to intellects more cultivated and pens far more skilled than mine. But as a Parthian shot, I would really venture to say that, if we want our society to grow and prosper, we need to show more compassion and empathy towards a "failure". Sometimes, it is better not to go overboard with our blame games. Some people may argue that what I am proposing is the very antithesis of the sermon preached in sundry self help books by confident philosophers: "You are the creator of your own destiny. You are the master of your own fate."



I understand.



Those lofty words do pump up the adrenaline and give the spirits a momentary high. But deep down, in our bones, we secretly know that even if we give our best, we never truly eliminate the chances of failure. What is required that we show the same understanding towards others.



That will be a true sign of maturity.

I have a hole in my heart

I have a hole in my heart. It needs patching up. Every morning, I get up and see myself in the mirror. The person who looks backs at me from the other side has an air of confidence. Well pressed clothes, nicely combed hair, collar buttoned up to hide the line where the coat of the moisturizer ends on the neck, with a smile calculated to charm. But I look deeper into the mirror and I see that his heart is punctured. I have tried to clean, dress and close the oozing wound and make it impervious to any further attacks hurled at it but the sutures do not hold for long, neither does the smile.

I step out of my house and I see flickering lights everywhere. I chase the lights and plunge at the illusory happiness, the desperation of my plunges tempered only with the civility of my upbringing. But those lights recede further and further and I end up staring at a dead end. Sometimes, I try to group the lights together and give them a collective shape, a shape which conveys a meaning and a purpose. But the lights rebel. They are neon lights after all. They modulate their brilliance and their hues according to the vagaries of their mood. They are only to entice, not to lead or to enlighten the path.

When I retire at night in the bed, I hear the sound of something dripping, trickling down. Alarmed, I switch on the lights and check every faucet in the house. Everything seems fine. All the taps are tightly wound up, with the exact amount of torque, like the way they should be. Relieved, I retire to my bed once more. But the sound keeps coming, the periodic trickle of an overflow which is being restrained against its wishes. Almost like a machine and with a skill which tooks years of practice, I numb myself to the sound, relegating it to the background, a solitary jarring note in an otherwise perfect medley. And I sleep. I sleep my night away.

I have a hole in my heart. It needs patching up.

July 3: My birthday today

My hair is a moody bunch, with a mind of its own. Like a petulant child, it follows its own whims and fancies. But today, surprisingly, most of it settled down quite well while I combed. Most of it, except one. One strand of hair would not budge. However hard I combed, it kept standing.
A rebel?
I look deeper into the mirror. It is.....a grey hair.
It is my birthday today.And I have got a grey hair.

Will the rebel live?

I look outside the window. The dawn is breaking. The sun is just out on the horizon, but not out of the woods yet. There are clouds surrounding him. The clouds are many, dark and sombre. The sun is alone and outnumbered. The clouds seem adamant on letting the darkness remain, on not allowing any light to pass through, on maintaining the status quo.
The sun is the new kid on the block. He is the gladiator for whom the whole sky is the arena. It is in the sky that he was born, and
it is here he will reach zenith or perish trying, here itself.
It is an engaging battle. At this moment, the clouds seem to have upper hand. The sun looks hesitant and unsure, not of the clouds , but of himself.
I am alone inside the room, or even outside it. The walls of the room appear tall and insurmountable. Like two men at a gathering, trying to avoid each other, but still managing to run into each other and going through forced motion of exchanging pleasantries, the walls of my room meet each other perpendicularly , without any smiles, with stiff lips in straight lines. What do these walls talk about when they meet at the corners? Do they talk about the occupant of the room? Do they sing paeans about him, saying how brave and persistent he has been? Or do they lampoon his efforts, as those of a hopeless romantic?
My room is just on the side of roads. It is still early in the morning and the roads are deserted. They seem wider when they are empty. A journey on road is metaphor for life itself. Sometimes the whole world travels with you, sometimes you travel alone. To stop travelling is to stop living. At this moment, the roads seem without any life, leading to nowhere. The long drawn moments of stillness are punctuated by the very occasional whirring of a motor engine or the seldom appearance of a bicycle. But these moments are few, and the concrete used to pave the roads seems to have frozen to death last night.
I take out an old diary from my drawer. It contains a poem which I wrote a long time back. The poem , titled "Truth", goes something like this:
I am the truth
The slayer of evil
The healer of wounds
The harbinger of hope
The champion of those who try
I am the last man who stood his ground.

I have been decried, been laughed at
But the last laugh was always mine.
I was dusted to the ground in many battles
But the war I always triumphed.
I was threatened and crucified
But every time, I rose Phoenix like.
I was outsmarted, outsprinted
But in the long run, I always won.
Civilizations perished when I was bound and gagged,
but it was my voice which delivered the final blow.

I am the chuckle of an infant
The profundity of a saint.
I am the strongest armor of the soldier
The map and compass of a traveller.
I am the anger of youth
The bugle of revolution.
I am the wisdom of the old
The voice of the conscience.
I am the guilt of a sinner
And the forgiveness of a enemy.
I am the mojo of the dame
The loyalty of the lover.

I am the truth
The slayer of evil
The healer of wounds
I am the last man who stood his ground.


I read the poem and look out of the window once more. The sun seems to have won his battle. The clouds are many and for a while they looked very powerful. But the sun held its ground. And now sunlight is streaming in through the window into my room. Against the majesticity of the sun, the walls of the room appear puny and small. The sunlight has revealed their true colours. It has shown how inconsequential the walls really are.

The sunlight has infused a new breath in the dead concrete of the roads outside. Slowly life is beginning to flow. Cars are zooming at ferocious speeds. Buses are honking. The hustle and bustle of the city is on display in its full splendour.

I look into the mirror once more. The grey hair is still standing tall, still rebelling. It is alone now, but over a period of time, it will be joined by others. These others, who are afraid to take a stand now, will soon realize how inexorable the march towards greatness is, if you have the desire to grow and the courage to suffer alone.

Happy birthday...
May the rebel live a 100 years !

I Know She is Beautiful But....

I know she is beautiful
But I have mountains to climb.
Her smile is like an oasis in a desert
But I have seas to fare
Depth of oceans to measure.

Her eyelids arch like bow of a ship
But there is wind in my sails still.
Her eager virginity invites me
But I have invitations of other kind too.
There are still goals to be chased
An unseen adventure still tempts.

Her hair swings and swirls around her head
Like a flame dancing about a candle.
There is a flame inside me too
which needs guarding against the winds of fate.
Her laughter is bewitching,
her splendid face shining like the moon
But I have stars to reach for
My own firmament to create.

I know she is beautiful
But I have mountains to climb.

Until

Until my heart explodes in my chest
Until they tie my arms and cut my legs
Until there is a drop of blood in my veins
Until I have not given my absolute best.
Until my spirit is broken and my mind chained
Until my back is crushed and my soul pained


Until the sun stops burning
and with it, stops burning the fire inside
Until my feet start bleeding
and not even then, from the thorns in my side
Until my maker comes to meet me
and tells me "Enough"
Until my hands get blisters
from the rope which, for others, was so rough

Until they take back the verdict which they gave
Until the seas clear and the mountains cave
Until a bolt from the skies strikes me dead
Until there is a gorge behind and a wall ahead
Until I have achieved pure joy and absolute victory
Until there is nothing more to claim , not even more glory
Until the bell tolls for me and my time is up
I am not going to give up
: Vishal Anand

(This post is dedicated to Malala Yousafzai ,a school girl activist in Pakistan ,who was shot at by Taliban for promoting education for girls in the country.)