Different Times, Different Strokes

India’s grounded sportspersons are creatively using their forced leave to lay the grounds for future success

- Soumitra Bose

A pandemic casts a veil across all human interaction in flesh and blood—the veil of mortality. As factories, railways and airlines stand stalled, so are fields and stadiums deserted—their pitches destitute of play, their bleachers deathly silent.

With sportspersons staring at an uncertain calendar across the world, top Indian athletes are using the lockdown to hone their talent and spend time with families. From exchanging their pistols with painting brushes to wielding the spatula and kitchen forceps, sportspersons have found ample time to indulge in their avocations. Some are in earnest communion with their maker, others can’t stop admiring the fancy haircut they got from their better-half. ‘Work from home’, indeed, is a catch-all term.

It’s a miraculous gift of time for professional athletes who ply their trade for at least 40 weeks every year away from their families. For the first time since its existence since 1984, the Sports Authority of India, the central agency that funds and provides infrastructure for athletes’ training, faces an extraordinary situation: several teams preparing for this summer’s now-postponed Tokyo Olympics were frozen, as it were, in mid-training.

The SAI’s Bangalore and Patiala centres house several Tokyo-bound sportspersons. Both centres have over 100 athletes and coaches each. While boxing, shooting, archery and wrestling camps have been completely closed, several middle and long-distance athletes remain there. The national women’s hockey team has spent two months in Bangalore; the men’s team, too, are left stranded after the SAI took extraordinary steps to isolate them in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in early March.