Do a cartwheel, Agartala

Can Dipa Karmakar’s feat help Tripura regain its glory days as the country’s gymnastics crucible?

August 27, 2016 04:30 pm | Updated November 17, 2021 02:30 am IST

Everyone knows the house of 15-year-old gymnast Asmita Pal. It is in the Jagahari Mura area of Agartala. Twenty metres down an extremely narrow and downhill lane, you reach a small two-room, tin-roofed affair that accommodates five members of the Pal family and as many pigeons.

Asmita’s father is Arun Chandra Pal, a daily-wage labourer who has not allowed his meagre earnings to become an obstacle for his daughters’ dreams. Her elder sister is doing her Master’s in English, and her second sister is an undergraduate and has tried her hand at gymnastics and judo. Pal, who was inspired by her sister to take up gymnastics, is in Class X and has already caught attention with her skills.

Every coach in Agartala speaks highly of Pal, hand-picked by Bishweshwar Nandi to join Dipa Karmakar during her final three-month pre-Olympics training at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Stadium. The gymnast, who has won 20 medals in State and national-level meets, personifies a rare combination of innocence and confidence and wants to emulate Karmakar. And she likes the challenge. “I enjoy doing all the exercises. I learnt a lot during the three months I spent in Delhi and want to be an international athlete like Dipa didi ,” she says. “We hope she will do well. She has been working hard for the last five years. She walks 10 km each way, everyday, to train,” says mother Shilpi shyly.

Pal is just one of several children who fight all kinds of adversities to learn gymnastics in Agartala, the cradle of the sport in the tiny Northeastern state of Tripura, pincered by Bangladesh from three sides, and by Assam and Mizoram on the other. Be it the 12-year-old National School Games gold medallist Dipangshu Sinha (son of an employee in the Agartala municipal office), the multiple national championship medallist 18-year-old Ashraful Zaman (son of a mason) or the State champion 15-year-old Bijay Barman (son of a rubber plantation worker), each of these gymnasts comes from a lower income group family and they all have stories to tell.

Dressed in shorts and vests, they sweat it out in the swelteringly hot hall of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre in Agartala. The tall, green walls and the cream-and-red equipment are hardly a match. But the mismatch between the talented children and the sub-par facilities is even starker. Yet, they fight it out every afternoon under the gaze of a well-built and determined-looking Hanuman statue.

“We enrol students who are around 10-12 years old with some background in gymnastics. We also take talented younger children, four or five years old, and observe them,” says Bijon Saha, gymnast-turned-coach at SAI.

Vivekananda Byayamgar, with its corrugated sheets, scarred cement floor, and equipment primarily meant for body-building and weightlifting, is another centre that trains beginners and has produced many gymnasts of repute. Karmakar had her first lessons here under the able guidance of Soma Nandi (who happens to be her present coach Bishweshwar Nandi’s wife.

The Netaji Subhash Regional Coaching Centre (NSRCC), the Dasarath Deb Sports School, and the Umakanta Academy (adopted by the SAI), are the other prominent gymnastics centres in Agartala. There is another centre as well, the brainchild of well-known gymnast and coach Mantu Debnath, now run by the Autonomous Development Council (administering the tribal areas) for the last three years. There is camaraderie among all these centres, at least in Tripura, and no one hesitates to extend a helping hand when talent is spotted.

Practical problems, however, abound. “We have got all the basic apparatus but we don’t have the allied apparatus, which include key support equipment that help students learn systematically. For instance, we don’t have a foam pit [the rubber base that provides support when a gymnast lands]. So, even if a gymnast wants to do difficult exercises, we cannot take the risk. Without adequate support, a gymnast can die if he or she lands awkwardly,” Saha points out.

Another major hurdle is the internal squabble within the Gymnastics Federation of India (GFI). This has meant that the national championship has not been held for three years now. “Two factions are fighting with each other and the gymnasts are not getting any competition. Three or four years are crucial in a gymnast’s life and if he or she does not get to compete, how will they improve!” Saha wonders. In any sport, competitions at various levels are the lifeblood, keeping the athletes sharp, focussed and competitive.

In fact, the same GFI factional feud had threatened to derail Karmakar’s Olympics journey. Thanks to Tripura Sports Minister Sahid Chowdhury’s timely initiative, the Union Sports Ministry shifted her preparatory camp to New Delhi, putting her under the direct supervision of the SAI and thus saved her career.

Another impediment has been the slow pace of the construction work of the regional coaching centre or NSRCC in Agartala. It has been in the process of being rebuilt for the last six to seven years, but is still far from completion. Recognising that Tripura had the talent and the initial momentum to create world-class gymnasts, the idea had been to make NSRCC one of Asia’s biggest gymnastics hubs, but the inordinate delay has been a dampener. Students from here are now being trained at the State’s sports school. Now, after Karmakar’s feat in the Olympics, Sports Minister Chowdhury has promised to complete the centre as soon as possible.

Despite all these hurdles, none of which sounds unfamiliar to anyone who follows sports management in the country, just one Dipa Karmakar’s performance at Rio has lifted everyone’s spirits. Tripura used to be the powerhouse of Indian gymnastics between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, mainly because of the efforts of armyman-turned-coach Dalip Singh from Haryana.

With sharp eyes that picked talent and enough acumen to motivate youngsters, Dalip Singh set up a system that produced gymnasts like Bikram Kishore Deb Barma, R.R. Roy, Mantu Debnath, Balaram Shil, Bishweshwar Nandi, Bijan Saha, Rathindra Kumar Ray, Kalpana Debnath, who shone at national and international meets. “Dalip Singh was passionate and worked hard to establish the sport here. He knew how to govern and spread the sport,” says Dr. Salam Sushila Devi, his 74-year-old widow, as she sits close to a black-and-white photo of her late husband in her old, tastefully done-up home. “He was very kind and would do everything to bring out the best in his students. He died at 55 but did a lot for the sport,”

Dr. Sushila Devi migrated from her native city Imphal to Agartala at a young age, where she now runs a pathology lab. She braved the scorching sun to join the thousands who attended Karmakar’s felicitation ceremony at Vivekananda Maidan. She has, in fact, not lost touch with gymnastics even three decades after her husband’s death, and neither have Dalip Singh’s students lost touch with her. Nandi feels that taking Dalip Singh’s legacy forward would be the most befitting tribute to his beloved teacher. “Our guruji prepared me and I became a three-time national champion and took part in 10 international events. Now, Dipa has taken it forward by becoming a seven-time national champion, winning international medals and coming fourth at the Olympics. When she becomes a coach, she should help her students excel even further,” says Nandi.

Karmakar, guided by Nandi, has reawakened Agartala to the possibility of reviving its rich heritage in a sport that still has too few takers in India. They have done their bit. Perhaps now the State and Central governments will step up and pump in the money, interest and infrastructure, a combination that can easily produce many more Karmakars.

sarangi.y@thehindu.co.in

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