Hima Das- from the paddy field of Assam to the track field of Tampere

Hima Das- from the paddy field of Assam to the track field of Tampere

Language is the system of communication used by a particular community/ country. It consists of the use of spoken or written words in a structured way. India was united (unintentionally) by the English-speaking Brits when they introduced English as a medium of instruction in schools and much of the work in the kingdom of official ‘babudom’ under British raj was carried out in English, a language as foreign to us as English cakes and cheese.

If you are wondering why the header reads as Hima Das with a tag line and what follows next is on English language, you will be astound to know that after ace sprinter Hima Das touched the finishing line first, a cyclonic victory, by mining gold in the 400 m final at the IAAF World under 20 athletics championship at Tampere in Finland, she being the first Indian athlete to earn laurel for India in a track event, the Athletics Federation of India very casually tweeted the following:

"speking (sic) to media after her SF win at iaafttampere2018 Not so fluent in English but she gave her best there too. So proud of u #Hima Das Keep rocking & yeah, try ur best in final!"

AFI representative who tweeted this must improve his/ her English first before commenting on an athlete’s English [I quote] "speking" skills. ‘Speking’ could be a typo but it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Such a comment voiced by an ignoramus official who represents the national government body manning sports is utterly unwanted and uncalled for. The official tried to eat his/ her words by re-tweeting . . . “you need to read the tweet again & understand it well & stop trolling.” Why did the official invite such a controversy in the very first place? AFI must take care so that its officials refrain from making such callous comments.

Hima was NOT in the field to prove her fluency in English but to participate in the international sports event. It's a shame that instead of congratulating such a rising talent, an official from Athletics Federation of India tweeted such an unwanted, ridiculous comment and tried to belittle her achievement.
Has the federation set a criteria that all Indian sportspersons must be fluent in English (a foreign language), and definitely a language which is not even Hima's mother tongue?
The fact that Hima has bagged a gold medal after all the hardships to reach the zenith of success speaks of talents that must be nurtured and not ridiculed on an online forum like twitter which has countless followers.

Even in the United Nations meet, country heads and representatives from non-English-speaking countries do speak in their respective mother-tongue. The official 'babu' from AFI lacks qualities to even represent India in an international arena and ‘wears a hat’ of embarrassment, neck-tied and cuff-linked with ridicule and mockery. However, Hima’s boots shines, it shines of gold. So what even if it was not quite the English way! Holding the tricolour and wrapping our Axomiya phulon gamusa around her neck and thanking her mentors (and even AFI) she appeared confident while speaking in English, believe me if you have missed it live. The silent tears which trickled from Hima’s eyes when she stood on the podium sporting her medal as India’s national anthem was played in the background is the simplest, highest and finest symbol of patriotism. And who says, Assam is the land of lage-lage? Hima Das proves them quite wrong, in quite her khar-khuwa Assamese way.

It was equally heartening to watch on the local news channel the often hilarious-witty caption of utterly-butterly delicious- Amul’s ad: Das pe dus! Race for it, the first such tiara to be crowned for an Assamese. Tweets from President, Prime Minister of India, Farhan Akhtar and a trail of Bollywood celebreties flooded the screen. The local print and electronic media equated her to Dhing Express and Bordochila (the pre-monsoon showers). The fact that she hails from a humble background from Dhing in Nagaon district of Assam cannot be ignored because true talent can never lie dormant.

Hima is an international hero, an awe-inspiring figure who will be admired by not just her sports-loving juniors but by crores of Indians- both on Indian terrain and those living on foreign shores. Beti-Bachao-Beti Padhao: Save girl child- educate girl child: Let the daughter play too, only then her days of domestic drudgery and playing second mother to her younger siblings will be over. Parents of such latent talents will never stop their child to take sports as a profession or to earn one’s bread or butter.

-Karobi Gogoi Hazarika

And we grew up playing

“The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child.”- Thomas Edison

While lunching at a relative’s birthday party a calendar with pictures of children playing ‘childhood games’ on Indian soil caught my eyes yesterday. The music which flooded the dining room transported me to a phase when Ma tried her best to lull me to sleep for an afternoon nap (mainly on Sundays/ holidays) but I would sneak out to play with my friends from the neighbourhood.

Nearly a decade back while on a trip to Chamba-Bharmour in Himachal Pradesh to escape what becomes a gas-chamber during Delhi’s sizzling summers, I saw youngsters tobogganing. What laughter each apple-red cheeks radiated! While ascending the curvy, nearly-steep climb as I panted, I couldn’t wait to pause a moment to see the boys tobogganing downhill with a blast of laughter in unison. Back home the younger version of me clad in a cotton frock would sit on coconut fronds while one of my pals would be happy to play the role of a pilot navigating me through the by-lanes inside the campus, with the condition that after some pulling she would sit on the much-prized ‘throne’.

This year the organisation where I am currently working held a 2-days team-building activity near a river’s confluence in Ukiam on the Assam-Meghalaya border. The pre-monsoon rain had not swollen the rivers and there was knee-deep water in most parts of the river. After trying the different outdoor adventure activities, my attention diverted to a group of young village boys who were playing the game of seven-stones right in the middle of the river. We played with lawn-tennis balls with randomly picked 7 flat stones which we collected from the road. The two groups, equally divided, has to target and topple the seven stones, each piled one after the other, something which resembles the place Baralach-la if you have travelled to Ladakh on the Manali-Leh highway. (Travellers stack stones offering prayers for their onward journey through the treacherous terrain). Even when the ball fell in the drain (the drains where much cleaner then), we picked it up, dipped it (at times only but not always) near the small pool of water next to my house and once again continued with the game. You see, hand-sanitizer came in much later and we perhaps became stronger by playing physical games and thereby building in strong resistance for our body.

Seasonal fruits are to be eaten and are only to be avoided when a virus is on an attacking mode. I much relish the sweet-juicy litchi (lechu in Assamese). Deota peeled-off the head of a match-stick and inserted the pointed end of it on the half-cut lechu seed and we happily spinned it as another lechu disappeared inside our cavernous mouth with the calcium-coated stalactite and stalagmite of teeth extracting the sweet flavour. We could make simple toys to play out of seeds we ate that has been replaced with the metallic fidget-spinner students are commonly seen spinning nowadays.

Tyre- Did you ever get tired of playing with tyres (or anything round/ cylindrical)? We derived as much pleasure by inflating air in the cycle tubes with the hand-pumps as by deflating air from unwanted trespasser’s motorised vehicles intruding our ‘game-space’. Our group also readily agreed to lend a helping hand to any stranger whose car’s engine failed and whose vehicle needed just one push to kick it live.

Kite-flying is yet another game which people cutting across all age groups enjoy. We now have kite-flying festivals organised by Jeevan held in our city. I have seen how Delhites esp. on Independence Day colour the sky with kites of different colours and sizes. On any other day each kite flier tries to cut kites flown by others by smearing the string with manja, a practice banned now as it snaps off or damages electrical wires and poses a threat to avian life.

And who has not collected marble and played with it in their childhood? The metamorphic rocks chiselled in perfect round shape can easily fill a child’s hands, front pockets and mind with metamorphic happiness by how much he or she has collected and the count in the jar. Playing with marbles is generally considered to be a boy’s game in India but our gang had this share of fun too.

Every girl- village, town, city or elsewhere is familiar with kut-kut (hop-scotch in English). Learning of geometry came in much later in school. In the absence of the white chalk, we drew boxes in paired squares and rectangles with broken pieces of brick which we usually found on the roadside and by flinging a stone inside the boxes we had to hop on one leg without touching the lines.

Panch-guti (knucklebones) was also a game which girls generally played with small stones. With the panch-guti- 5 stones inside our right fist we had to slightly throw the 5 stones in the air as swiftly as possible and turn the right palm facing the ground and then carefully let the flying 5 stones settle on our fingers. There were different rounds for the game of panch-guti, a few involving both the hands simultaneously.

We also experimented on developing communication lines by building something which somewhat resembled Alexande Graham Bell’s invention- the telephone. Though in no way it looked like the dialled landline telephone of yesteryears, we were at least able to hear the sound which was carried through the thread and with containers attached at both ends. Reuse and recycle we did even then to make devices with which we greeted each other ‘Hello, hello’ followed by long, loud laughter.

People of my age will surely agree that back then Guwahati was far greener and we had lots of vacant land on which children could play. Greenery also meant that we had more hideouts for the game of hide-and-seek. God! We never fell sick while playing this game even when it rained. If outside it was hide-and-seek, it was blind-man inside invariably in a dark room in which a child’s eyes was covered with a gamusa and the blind-man had to find his/ her missing mates in the cover of darkness.

As a child I didn’t quite like to eat curd but I thoroughly enjoyed tekeli-bhanga khel (sans the curd). I surmise, the game of breaking the empty earthen pot by a blind-fold man holding a stick and marching all the way in search of the pot (minus the treasure) must have emanated from Lord Krishna’s days. You have to sniff your way out to locate that pot in order to win.

Padum-phool, literally meaning lotus, is not just a flower which grows on water. It was a game too in Assam in my growing up years. It could be a dead game now. 2/3 players were enough in which a pair would sit down on the ground facing each other. The duo had to try different hands and legs posture while the third one had to jump, over and above, and cross the duo, with no body part of the jumper touching the sitting-pair. Otherwise, she was declared out. Talk about flowers and it reminds me of yet another childhood game- Aai Re Amar Tagor. I may have forgotten the rules of this game but I remember the last few lines

“ . . . Juwa bhonti juwa goi, chira-pitha khuwa goi.”

Assam is a land-locked state. We may not enjoy a maritime climate like children in coastal areas do but we have good weather to play. Coastal location reminds me of sand and sands in turn reminds me of castles- sand castles. I can vouch on the fact that we all have sun-soaked our hands once in life with sand for building castles. Not all of us can be an architect in life but no harm if a child architect builds one out of sand, with the township complete with neat roads, row of trees and a place of worship at the summit of a miniature hillock.

Tug-of-war:  The rope in the front line (as in a battle front) instead of being placed in between two warring parties is instead placed parallel to the two teams as they face each other and each member clings to the rope as tightly as possible in order to win. Life is like a game of tug-of-war. It must be best played with true sportsmanship. Likewise, “Love is like a tug-of-war. It’s hard to hold on. But it’s harder to let go.”

Musical chairs and passing the parcel exclusively came under birthday or picnic games. The sound of clanging simple kitchen utensils like a steel bowl and a steel spoon was for passing the parcel. Indoor games which dominated was Ludo ( Latin for ‘I play’). My elder brother always cheated when he realised that he had little chance of winning on Ludo. Once or twice I remember playing a Manipur indoor game with cowrie shells, thanks to my next-door neighbour Sinha aunty whose sons were my elder brother’s friends. During winters we made a badminton court in the children’s park near my house and connected the court with electrical wires to bring in electricity from home so that we could play even after the sun set at around 5 p.m.

In those days a doctor’s chamber was few and far between, in sharp contrast to today’s world. So what did we do when there was an injury while playing? “Suck your own blood if the blood oozes out in trickles”, I heard someone from my friends circle say. We may die if we do it now. Blame it on our too toxic and polluted blood. It is strange considering at that point of life when we were academically at the lower rungs of the ladder we knew which plant’s crushed leaves or juice to apply on the fresh wound, something which evades my memory at early 40s.  If the blood gushed out, then the injured player headed straight home. Parents, neighbours, relatives would take us to the dispensary. Only the real sick rushed to hospitals then while the not-so-sick visited the local dispensaries.

Play your game well. “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have , and only you can determine how it will be spent.”-  Carl Sandburg