I’m a great fan of India Shining stories. Well, not quite the ‘since-we-all-work-in-glass-steel-buildings-we-can-afford-malls-and-multiplexes’ kind of stories, but the ones that make me believe that the much talked about ‘great Indian growth story’ could actually be of some use to the masses to whom globalisation is as much a farce as the shiny glass and steel buildings. I’ve noticed that stories of the latter type come out of the most unlikely places. Like the son of an idli vendor who is now a big businessman-cum-philanthropist or the girl who created several model villages using the Right To Information act.
One evening, during my internship with a big newspaper in Chennai, I was asked to accompany a senior sports reporter to an assignment to interview some beach volleyball players. My only past brushings with beach volleyball were watching hardly-clad firang women on TV! I had no idea that beach volleyball was played in India, let alone that we even had players who frequently represented India in the world stage. Curious, and a little amused, I went expecting a bunch of kids who’d probably be tucked away in an artificial beach in some quiet part of Chennai. Images of bikinis, privileged kids playing the sport only as a passport to bag the much coveted medical college seat later fluttered in my mind. Instead, the senior reporter steered towards Nehru stadium, which boasted of an artificial beach volleyball turf. As we watched the two pairs of girls and boys in action on the court, I couldn’t help admiring their gymnastic abilities, coordination and nimble feet that looked so natural on the golden sands. Revathi and Pavithra, all of 17, were practicing extra hard because they had been chosen for the first ever Asian Youth Games to be held in Singapore the following week.
Pavithra’s father is an auto driver and Revathi’s widowed mother is a farm labourer near Coimbatore. Both are products of Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu (SDAT)’s Sports Hostel. The unique and successful initiative scouts for sporting talent, especially in rural areas, and then mentors a sportsperson in a particular sport, sponsoring their living, sports and education costs along the way. Thanks to such an initiative, Revathi and Pavithra, are today not just seasoned junior beach volleyball players who have participated in a couple of international tournaments, they are also young college students on full scholarship in tuition and hostel, thanks to SDAT’s emphasis on higher education. In another world, they would have been burdens to their respective families in our rather patriarchal structure, factoring education, dowry, marriage and other costs. But thanks to sports and the confidence that comes along with playing it, they’re international volleyball players apart from being computer science college students, who’d not only be an asset to their families but also catalysts who’d spur socio-economic mobility for generations to come.
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