Brave-heart Sanil battles odds to rise up the ranks

My heart rate goes up to 120 beats per minute (BPM) when it would be around 90 BPM if an ordinary person did the same activity.”

You quickly pick up on Sanil Shetty’s acquired tendency to normalise situations which most wouldn’t, some might even say one shouldn’t. That said, that trait is perhaps what makes him the second-best male table tennis player in the country for his past brings up a lot of emotions, and he uses the sport to navigate it.

The second son of Shankar Shetty and Bharathi Shetty was born 33 years ago, prematurely and with a gaping hole in his heart. He was given a year to survive.

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Shankar and Bharathi - a typical middle-class couple out of Mumbai - scoured the land in search of a solution after conventional medicine had put a timer on their infant’s mortality. Luckily, homoeopathy came to the rescue, alleviating most of Sanil’s symptoms.

Still, the trauma of watching their child overcome death wouldn’t allow the family to let Sanil live the life of a regular child.

He wasn’t allowed to play a sport with the other kids. He had either his father or his maid accompany him to school and back. He was signed up for sketching classes instead.

All this while, Sanil would run out of breath every few steps. And so, Sanil longingly watched his neighbours playing from his window when all he wanted was to have friends.

“I was not a normal child because of my condition, but I learnt how to live with it,” says Sanil, on the sidelines of Bengaluru Smashers’ Ultimate Table Tennis challenge in Pune.

“But one day, I saw my brother (Sachin) come home with a big trophy he had won from a table tennis tournament and I wanted it too. I must have been around 10-11. My father was a table tennis player (IDBI bank) too I thought it made sense for me to try it,” he adds.

The folks weren’t convinced but they knew keeping a pre-pubescent boy on house arrest, even if well-intentioned, can’t be a good thing. “There began my journey. I tried athletics for a year but eventually table tennis was the answer,” he recalls. “By that time, I could run properly. My heart was fine.”

But the family finances were dwindling so Sachin decided to leave the sport to let his younger brother have a go.

Sanil has since won the National title a few times and Commonwealth Games team gold on a couple of occasions. “…last August, I lost my dad,” he says abruptly when talking about all the sacrifices his family has made for him. “I would be nothing without him. He sacrificed a lot for me. Now, mum stays with my brother and I travel to events with my wife… they have all done so much for me.”

Sanil now finds himself on the squad for the Hangzhou Asian Games in September and reckons the UTT provides the perfect platform for the future.

“It’s good to be part of such big team events before something like the Asian Games,” he reveals. “A tournament like this helps people like me with confidence. You can take on big players and you learn their weaknesses and their strengths and you work around it. That’s what happened to me in the first season. I learnt so much."

As the conversation dove into preparation, the Smashers and his eventual goals, the role of fitness was brought up, keeping in mind the journey. “I am perfectly fine now. But the funny thing is that even now my heart rate spikes easily to 120 but the good thing is that it drops back quickly too. Any new trainer who sees this gets so worried. It’s funny.”

Seems like Sanil has learnt to laugh when most wouldn’t, some might even say one shouldn’t.