No Sports Please….We are Indians!

Let’s begin with a local proverb from my motherland, Bihar: “Padhoge-likhoge to banoge nawab, kheloge-kudoge to banoge kharab”….. (Study and become the respected best, but play if you want to waste).

The reason why I chose this as my opening line for this blog was to argue that we, the Indians, are generally apathetic towards sports. Any average Indian would struggle to name ten international sports’ names, let alone the names of sportspersons. Our International sporting identity hinges only on cricket, a sport only a handful nations play and which was until last week an unrecognized sports by the IOC (International Olympic Committee). So, technically speaking, cricket and “Chor-Sipahi” (thief and the police running game), were of the same league in IOC’s reckoning! Bottom-line, we are ignorant of the term called International sports. So much so, that the Vancouver Winter Olympics, which is happening right now, finds no place in newspapers.

The question is how and where this ignorance set in and then hardened into a total apathy towards sports? The answer, to my belief, lies not in our years’ of lackluster display on the field but in our education system.

I did my schooling from a respected institute run by the Jesuit missionaries of charity. It had a huge library, a great computer facility, big colonial styled class rooms and two huge playing fields. It also had a leased facility in another sports ground just a stone throw away. We had all the different balls (no pun intended) like the football, volleyball, basket ball, the cricket ball (of course) and also we had a big swimming pool. So, technically speaking, the school was well equipped to nurture sporting ambitions.

However, I could never understand, that despite all the facilities and equipments why we had just one 40 minute “period” of sports in the entire week’s schedule. Mind you there were 5 days of schooling, each day divided in 8 periods of 40 minutes each. There was a games teacher, who was all too interested in queuing up kids and teaching some mindless calisthenics and yoga. And during the rainy seasons, it would inevitably rain the day we had the sports period. Seemed like the heavens were also against our sports period.

Finally, by the time I went to high school (Standard 9 and 10) it was decreed that we had too much knowledge to acquire for the upcoming board examinations and it would be in the best interest of the students to sacrifice the sports period. That was the end of sports for many of my friends.

Yes, there was the legendary “Sports Day” when suddenly four houses would spring back to life after almost a year’s hibernation and compete in some 20 odd disciplines with one house emerging the victor. But then by that time, the unsuspecting hapless kids, who had no reason to doubt the education system, were made to believe that all that the sports may get you is a medal and nothing else. I think the only better way this message could have been hammered home would have been: if our principal would have thundered in the daily assembly everyday that “Sports is injurious to career building” and had this profound wisdom goldplated and kept at a prominent place so that all can see it and assimilate it.

After school, came college where an even stiffer climb to engineering/medical/accounting/management was awaiting and at that time indulging in sports suddenly seemed like a sin. Every minute was to be spent in the pursuit of the career. We were comprehensively browbeaten to believe about the negative impact of Sports in our prospective career. Sports would not figure in the top ten of the list of priorities. One evening of after exam cricket was the only dosage of sports available.

Then I entered the work-life and all of sudden sports were permanently out of life. I do not blame the employers for the lack of sporting interest and the overall miserable fitness level of young Indians let alone the pathetic showing of team spirit and sportsmanship, so rampant in the workplaces. I blame it on our education system which believes the Hindi proverb at the beginning of this write up.

Our educations system considers each individual as an island. You plant books, you grow marks. You reap degrees, you get jobs. There is no place for sports. Since the formative childhood days never receive a dosage of sports, we happily ignore them as if they never existed and pursue the career with great zeal. However, does this make us great professionals?

At workplaces, I see people with no concept of team spirit, a pivotal quality required to produce great results. Every office is awash with scenarios elucidating utter lack of sportsmanship in conflict scenarios. Then again, you can add the un-sportsmanlike behavior of politicizing the workplace and all the dark arts of gaming wizardry which we despise, yet carry out and even encourage. And lastly, add the misplaced concept of weighing competition ahead of co-operation.

Could this be prevented? I like to believe, it can be.

You don’t need to have a Harvard MBA to understand that a game of football is won by the team with best on field skill and team spirit. The objective of sports is to rely on your partners and help them so that all of you reach the common goal of victory. Team first, is a must have quality should you need to win. High performance teams co-operate more than compete within its own boundaries. Weaving sports tightly in the fabric of education imparts this valuable lesson which people badly need to carve out a meaningful and happy work life with colleagues.

Sports teach a great concept of being fair. Not many instances are available where prolonged sporting success is achieved compromising the fairness. Later on, this helps a great deal in respecting others’ qualities at workplace and also by recognizing solicitations of unfair nature and swiftly dousing them.

Sports are a great teacher of pursuit of excellence. A singles tennis player or a boxer has to train extremely hard to get to a level of repute. The road to progress is solitary but requires a lot of focus and determination let alone the dedication.

Lastly, sports teach the most important lesson of respecting others. All sportspersons reach a pinnacle and then the inevitable physical decay makes way for a new champion. You learn the most important art of losing yet not losing it all. As a sportsman, you take to this transition with grace and not like a greedy politician who tries to stick to the power by indulging in unfair means. Extrapolate it to workplace and you will respect your juniors and would credit them and believe them and let them grow.

If, we the Indians, had more sports in our curriculum and they were pursued with a little more earnestness or with as much as seriousness as trigonometry was pursued with, I would put my money in seeing a better generation of workers and professionals. The places to work would probably be a tad fairer and of course I would not see so many unfit, obese and physically weak individuals in their twenties and thirties.

So, tomorrow I am off riding my mountain bike for my daily 40 km ride and hope I see a change in the attitude of my in-laws who are almost sure that I have lost my mind, for no real reason exists which explains to them why would their son in law wants to cycle the whole Himalayas when one can as well drive. However, one small problem persists, my in laws are Indians and we do not believe in sports as a way of life. No sports please, we are Indians!