Battling odds to make name in sport

Tripura gym trains poor children

Gymnast Ashmita Paul during her practice session at Vivekananda Byamagar in Agartala. Abhisek Saha

The ramshackle gym was training ground for many medal winners

Teenager Ashmita Paul comes from a poor background. Her father is a daily wager and mother a domestic help. From childhood, the 15-year-old has nurtured a dream to become an ace gymnast and started pursuing the sports following in the footsteps of her two elder sisters. However,  the eldest left the sports and got married and the other dropped out to concentrate on studies as sports no longer ensured a government job that easily.

But Ashmita has not lost hope as she pedals 10 km every day to reach a rickety nondescript gymnasium of sorts in Tripura’s capital Agartala to pursue her dream and become the next big name in Indian gymnastics. Her inspiration– another ace gymnast from Agartala – Dipa Karmakar, who has now become a household name after she missed a bronze narrowly at the recently held Rio Olympics.

Gymnastics, which was at the bottom of the priority list in sports, has again caught the imagination of people in the country.  Dipa’s achievement also brought the spotlight on Tripura, the smallest state in the Northeast bordering Bangladesh. Since Independence, Tripura’s gymnasts have won 65 national championships at various levels.  Most of the gymnasts come from poor background and trained at a small public-run gym which started  in 1947 and still has only basic  infrastructure.

For six decades,  the least talked about Vivekananda Byamagar, situated in a small bylane in Agartala, has been training young gymnasts from poor background free. “Our family leads almost hand-to-mouth existence. I am attracted to gymnastics. But for gymnastics one has to have a very balanced diet and good gym to practice. Most of the girls who practice here, are from poor families. Children of rich people take to cricket or tennis. Gymnastics is a poorman's sport in our country. Only because this small gym still offers us free coaching with food after training we get to chase our dreams,” says Ashmita, who is seen as an international medal prospect.  

  Little Ashmita won three golds and a silver in the sub-junior national championship in Punjab in 2013, two bronzes and a silver in the women's section of national gymnastics in Ranchi in 2014, a bronze at the National School Games in Kolkata in 2015 despite being sick, and two silver medals each in the Women's Gymnastics Nationals in Hyderabad and Sub-Junior National Championship this year.

Every day after 3 pm, the gym starts buzzing with activity when  children and teenagers gather to hone their gymnastic skills. All of them have many things in common-- talent, poverty and several medals at national championships. 

No foam for training

Last year Ashmita also represented India in World School Games. Every young gymnast in the gym has a story of success to narrate. “Dipa never had a foam or rubber pit for training. She would stack up used karate mats. This is what we even do today here in this Byamagar. This place is like cradle which has never celebrated,” said Sports Authority of India (SAI) gymnastic coach Soma Nandi, who first coached Dipa Karmakar when she was only five years old.

Soma and her husband Bisweshwar Nandi, who recently got the Dronacharya award for gymnastic coaching, volunteered to coach young talents at this gym. They are assisted by other coaches who have been national champions.

“Six generation of gymnasts got their early lessons at this gym. The achievement is unparalleled in the history of Indian gymnastics. Most of the gymnasts of Tripura came from poor background and that’s why you see we have loads of medals at sub-junior and junior levels.  But many  drop out either to pursue studies or take up  jobs. Many left after becoming national champions,” Banashri Debnath, a former national champion and a gymnastic coach at Vivekananda Byamagar, said.

To begin with the place was not famous for gymnastics. “In the 1950s it was only known for wrestling, bodybuilding and weight training. It produced some very good weightlifters like Dulal Debbarma and Pranab Majumder,” said Dipa’s father and SAI’s weightlifting coach  Dulal Karmakar.

The gym was always crowdfunded. “When we started we collected donations from people and bought basic equipment in those days for weight training,” said octogenarian Swedesh Bhaumik, one of the founders of Vivekananda Byamagar.

Swami Vivekananda was in those days a great icon for the youth thus it was named after him. Inside the gym one can still find an idol of Lord Hanuman, who is offered prayers every day by wrestlers and weightlifters.

Gymnastic training began by chance in 1964 when Duleep Singh from Haryana arrived as a gymnastic coach.  Duleep had to start from scratch. Tripura had no history of gymnastics and there was no infrastructure. He approached the management of the Vivekananda Byamagar to let him allow the courtyard to start gymnastics.

He got the space and the Byamagar also gave him volunteers to scout for  young talent. Singh literally went door-to-door asking parents to send their children for gymnastics. In 1968, one of his gymnasts Bharat Kishore Debburman went on to become the junior national champion. That was the beginning, Singh and this wobbly gym went on to produce Mantu Debnath, first Indian gymnast to win Arjuna Award, Kalpana Debnath, Balaram Shil and the five-time national champion Bisweshwar Nandi to name a few.

During those days, Singh got a huge support to develop basic gymnastic infrastructure in this gym with the help of another national-level weightlifting coach from Tripura, Amarendra Bhaumik.

Singh and the patrons of the gym decided that to promote gymnastics the coaching would remain free, the rule still applies. There was yet another unwritten rule that no child would ever be turned back. That’s why Soma Nandi did not turn Dipa Karmakar back when she came to Vivekananda Byamagar though she was flatfooted.

Now, Tripura has three government-run gymnasiums for training. But  they lack infrastructure. With Dipa’s success Vivekananda Byamagar will be more famous and raise hopes for the poor, who want to pursue sports and become champions.