On Your Marks!
You win some, you lose some.
The sun slips between the clouds. Its fiery yellow gaze soon fades into shades of orange and pink. It's calmer and cooler. The twilight hour sets in. A scooter honks its way past the lane you are walking in. You are returning from a zealous match between your neighborhood and the one down the street. It was the boisterous boys’ gang that hangs out for cricket. With sweat drenching your tee and your breath heavy, you walk home brandishing the bat to practice the square cut that had gone wrong in the match. It was the wicket you dearly wished you had not lost. There's the usual thread of motivation going in your head, about how there's always another chance and how you can make it up in the next match. Before you realize you've reached the doorstep of your home. There's mum at the door asking you to freshen up with tasty snacks lined up. After you savor the last bit of it, it dawns on you that there's a test tomorrow.
Time ticks. You age. So does the bat. Tests bundle up. Visits to the lane with the gang become infrequent. Cricket lessens. Study time expands. You wield the pen more than the bat. The bat gathers dust in the almirah. Soon you realize cricket becomes a thing of the faded past. A faint memory you believed in and caught tightly back then.
Such a reverie would have passed one way or the other in our heads. It’s definitive that all of your lives had this string of experience, given you trudged through two years of JEE preparations. It needn’t necessarily be cricket, but definitely some other game you fancied dearly. Well, what’s done can’t be undone. However one can surely revisit those memories that kept you on the go towards becoming a sportsperson.
For most of us such sporting dreams are intricately tied to our childhood-those carefree days with no academic pressures and responsibilities and all that you did was play and dream, take a frivolous little scolding from the aunt next door for breaking her vase or tip-toe silently down the scary uncle's garden for the ball. Soon you emerge as the neighborhood star of the game. That's when the dream of achieving something big sets in.
Alas! Not every one of us is an MSD here to nurture that dream and stay put to that vision we have set. We succumbed to the pressures as we grew older; sacrificed that small little world and left it behind in some cozy corner.
In a bid to ring the bell at nostalgia’s house, we invited people all over Instagram to fill in a questionnaire that set rhythm for reminiscing. The responses were a ride in itself, like a string of dreams over an array of obligations.
Childhood has an integral role to play in terms of the affinity you develop towards a certain kind of sport. Stirring those glib pastimes by the street that eventually grew into serious school-day feats was the first question :
What were the sports you were crazy about during school-days? Did you have any favorite ones?
The responses were diverse and colorful; as indigenous as kabaddi to as western as basketball and as jubilant as football and cricket to a still, solemn and serene game such as Chess.
A throw back to their nostalgia later, we decided to delve deep into their game with the following question :
Why did you like that sport particularly?
This did invite an assortment of answers that set in different tones. With some flippant and light-hearted "I just love it" to some that showed serious enthusiasm and passion to the sport it was a complete myriad of expressions and the childhood feels. Some operated with pure emotion but some justified sternly with reasons based on their skill. Amidst the fervent chaos of the musings of the past was a commonality- a single thread of love for the sport that bound them together.
You never know how you get lost in a terrain that you love dearly. The sail had been smooth till now, so we thought of giving the wind to take its turn, make it a little bumpy with the next question asking people on whether they gave up on any sport.
Did you abandon any other sport for the sake of a single one. Were you single-minded about one and were an ardent fan of it?
Another one that carried the same tune was,
Did you give up on other interests to pursue it?
It was a matter of surprise when we received answers. Some quick numbers showed over 70 percent of the people abandoned one sport for the love of other or for sometimes unavailability of their sport in their niche. The rest were single-minded and pursued one. Well, it sure was sports galore reading answers!
You can’t have the cake and eat it too. You can’t sail in two boats at the same time. Life is about trade-offs. If there’s one thing time has taught us all, it’s the exchange of innocence with experience- an exchange all of us made in our senior secondary school. Evoking those feels was the next question,
Why haven't you been able to pursue it as much as you wanted to ? Was there anything major that set you back?
Well, this isn't quite new. A ubiquitous stream of answers that had JEE flew in. They were phrased differently, but nevertheless carried the same cry. The same regret. The same sorrow intertwined with a sense of solace that nothing big has been lost. While some declared lack of opportunities and fitness levels to be their set-back factors, a humongous number of about 91% had something to do with studies.
There’s something incredibly honest about the trees during the winter, how they seem to be the experts at letting things go. Drawing lessons from them and with all the ifs and buts gathered all this while, we next asked our audience about re-creating their life with this,
If you had the chance to talk to your younger self what advice would you give yourself with regards to sports and the balance you drew between it and other activities? How would you want to re-create your life?
Unsurprisingly, the advice, albeit spanning several sports and childhood experiences, remained somewhat consistent. Words of reminiscence and-dare we say- regret seemed to be the points of focus, such as terms of time management and prioritization. The other type of advice we received was of a more simplistic and blithe nature, wanting to tell their younger selves to relax a little, take their lives more easily, and enjoy their game like it’s the last time. It is heartening to know that while the former athletes and sportsmen with fire in their bellies had to sacrifice their passion in favor of their long term goals, they still nurture the same passion and fondness for what made them happy in their hours of leisure.
And there you have it! We asked, and you delivered. It might be too late for your younger selves to take pride and relish their talent in sports, but it is surely not too late for you to feel it, to remind yourselves to stop and smell the roses, to rediscover a happiness once lost. Here’s to hoping that you’ll maybe even rediscover your passion for the game, as you witness Sportsfete ’19 in action.
This story was written in collaboration with Naman Karn and Amritha Jayakanth from the Sportsfete Content Team, with illustrations by Sneha from the Sportsfete Design team.
