Sports – The Great Unifier & The Great Justifier
In addition to sport being the great unifier it is also the great justifier. This statement is explained through my recent experiences below.
My yoga teacher invited me to join him and his family on their trip to each of their respective villages to celebrate Diwali. I said “Yes,” of course, and spent the last 3 days experiencing true rural India Haryana village style.
Since this is a sports blog I will leave out the details of the excitement of milking my first Buffalo, the unique experience of being the first foreigner to ever visit these two villages and the simple beauty of life in an Indian village.
I must say that it was incredible gaining a firsthand look at why Haryana villages produced the majority of Boxing and Wrestling medalists at the recent Commonwealth Games. These village men grow up in a culture of hard manual labor, eat protein rich vegetarian diets and drink more thick Buffalo milk in a day than one would think possible. This combination creates strong men who are perfectly built for sports that require brute force.
We arrived at the village on Friday afternoon and my yoga teacher immediately took me around to meet the other villagers. Slowly our group of 2 became 10, 15 and then 25 as the other villagers followed behind us during our journey, mainly due to a combination of boredom and intrigue.
As the village sports coach was explaining the academy to me, I couldn’t stop staring at the climbing rope hanging from the ceiling. As soon as the coach finished, I walked over to the rope, jumped on it and climbed up to the ceiling in front of 50 curious eyeballs. Once I successfully reached the top, I slid down too quickly and cut up my hand pretty bad.
What I noticed after we continued the tour (other than the fact that my hand was throbbing and bleeding) was that the 25 villagers following me through the village looked at me a bit differently. It may sound cheesy, but after I climbed that rope I slowly transformed from being a pure outsider to someone who did something, even if all that something was to climb a rope and cut up my hand.
Sports Experience #2 – Pick Up Soccer Match
Small actions, lead to small results which is exactly what the rope climb did. By the time we got back to my yoga teacher’s house the group had already forgotten about the rope. They were waiting for the next something to prove my village “celebrityness.” I resorted to the 3 bags of Mars mini bars I brought from Gurgaon and started handing out the chocolates, but they quickly digested them and looked at me unfazed.
So even though I was only a couple of hours into the 3 day village trip, I had to play my trump card. I took out the adidas soccer ball I had thankfully thrown into my bag at the last second. Their eyes lit up and next thing I knew 25 became 45 and we were all heading out to the “ground” they call a sports field.
Before the game started, I had to first take a few swings with the cricket bat as some sort of initiation for people looking to organize a soccer match on their field. Once I proved that my baseball swing technique does in fact work for amateur cricket, they were finally ready to play soccer.
I wish I could say it was organized and enjoyable, but it wasn’t. It was a mess: no one knew what team they were on, where the goals were, how to kick the ball, etc… But as soon as the game ended we were all sweat and smiles and I was suddenly part of their tight knit community. After my series of “sporting achievements” on that memorable Friday afternoon, the group still followed me around for the rest of the 3 days however I no longer had to justify my worth in their village.
Thank God for pick up soccer games or I’m sure they would have followed me to the river to see how I relieved myself village style…
My yoga teacher invited me to join him and his family on their trip to each of their respective villages to celebrate Diwali. I said “Yes,” of course, and spent the last 3 days experiencing true rural India Haryana village style.
Since this is a sports blog I will leave out the details of the excitement of milking my first Buffalo, the unique experience of being the first foreigner to ever visit these two villages and the simple beauty of life in an Indian village.
I must say that it was incredible gaining a firsthand look at why Haryana villages produced the majority of Boxing and Wrestling medalists at the recent Commonwealth Games. These village men grow up in a culture of hard manual labor, eat protein rich vegetarian diets and drink more thick Buffalo milk in a day than one would think possible. This combination creates strong men who are perfectly built for sports that require brute force.
Sports Experience #1 – The Rope Climb
We arrived at the village on Friday afternoon and my yoga teacher immediately took me around to meet the other villagers. Slowly our group of 2 became 10, 15 and then 25 as the other villagers followed behind us during our journey, mainly due to a combination of boredom and intrigue.
As they followed us, they just stared at me waiting for something. None of us knew what that something was, but we all knew it had to happen or they would quickly write me off as some lame city guy who doesn’t even speak Hindi. Fortunately our village tour stopped at the village Sports Academy where they train Haryana men to be national boxing and wrestling champions.
As the village sports coach was explaining the academy to me, I couldn’t stop staring at the climbing rope hanging from the ceiling. As soon as the coach finished, I walked over to the rope, jumped on it and climbed up to the ceiling in front of 50 curious eyeballs. Once I successfully reached the top, I slid down too quickly and cut up my hand pretty bad. Sports Experience #2 – Pick Up Soccer Match
Small actions, lead to small results which is exactly what the rope climb did. By the time we got back to my yoga teacher’s house the group had already forgotten about the rope. They were waiting for the next something to prove my village “celebrityness.” I resorted to the 3 bags of Mars mini bars I brought from Gurgaon and started handing out the chocolates, but they quickly digested them and looked at me unfazed.
So even though I was only a couple of hours into the 3 day village trip, I had to play my trump card. I took out the adidas soccer ball I had thankfully thrown into my bag at the last second. Their eyes lit up and next thing I knew 25 became 45 and we were all heading out to the “ground” they call a sports field.
Before the game started, I had to first take a few swings with the cricket bat as some sort of initiation for people looking to organize a soccer match on their field. Once I proved that my baseball swing technique does in fact work for amateur cricket, they were finally ready to play soccer.
I wish I could say it was organized and enjoyable, but it wasn’t. It was a mess: no one knew what team they were on, where the goals were, how to kick the ball, etc… But as soon as the game ended we were all sweat and smiles and I was suddenly part of their tight knit community. After my series of “sporting achievements” on that memorable Friday afternoon, the group still followed me around for the rest of the 3 days however I no longer had to justify my worth in their village.
Thank God for pick up soccer games or I’m sure they would have followed me to the river to see how I relieved myself village style…
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