Nostalgia is not what it used to be.
This post is triggered by today's last page headlines.
The year is 1960. I am in the 11th standard. The headmaster is a graceful gentleman. Stern but kindly. Tough but fair. Well-built but not over-weight. Taller than the other teachers. Handsome in a Balraj Sahni way, only more so.
He turns up just-about-moist eyed at one late-summer morning school meet. "It is a sad day for India", says he, starting his daily address, "our Olympic contingent will return without a medal."
A youngish know-it-all, not me, chirps up, jumping right into the trap, "But Sir, we won the silver in hockey."
"If you leave behind gold, bringing home silver does not count."
The hockey gold is something we have always taken for granted. Much breast-beating follows all over the country. Pundits propound various theories. Pundit Nehru chips in with his two bits worth. Unanimous conclusion: something must be done.
The Punjab government, feeling guilty as the supplier of a majority of hockey players, announces a path-breaking and Olympics-busting plan to encourage sports of all varieties.
All schools are required to have training programmes. Each will cover at least five disciplines of their choice. There will be weekly competitions for individual and monthly ones for team sports at district headquarters .
The first three in each category will get a "collar pin". Three different colours. The school getting the maximum number of pins gets a rotating shield. The school getting the maximum pins over the year gets to keep the shield.
When the first pins adorn school uniform shirt collars of a few of my fellow students, I am happy for them for I know that they have worked hard to earn them. Not having adequate athletic skills to go up against the best, I also feel a little bit sorry for myself.
The turnaround comes very fast. In no time, the better endowed schools have figured out that if you send different, but able, kids every week, you improve your chances of the annual win. The students, or their parents, have figured out that you don't really have to win it; there is a price for every 'pin'.
Within a few weeks, the city is full of coloured pins. Everyone and his brother is wearing one or more pins testifying to their athletic prowess. The scheme collapses.
Snippets
1. We were to win the gold only twice after that. In Tokyo 1964 when we beat Pakistan in sweet revenge for the Rome 1960 loss. And later in Moscow 1980, when no other team of any standing turned up to play.
2. In short order both Pakistan and India were relegated to lower ranks by the white man who "will never learn how to tackle our wily dribblers". Not qualifying for Beijing 2008 was the nadir. Qualifying for London 2012 merited front page banner headlines; seen in a sports context only when India wins a cricket world cup or Maria Sharapova wins or loses anything.
3. The enormity of what had happened in 1960s became clear to me only in the early seventies when I travelled by road around England and Europe one summer. Over a matter of two weeks and hundreds of kilometres I never ever saw a field hockey ground. Or anyone playing it. Every village I passed through had two or more football grounds, though.
4. The year we first lost the hockey gold, I was a member of my school's junior hockey team. The shortest, slightest and the only 11th standard player in the whole district; most were in the 8th or lower. This lead to much resentment and charges of under-reporting of age. My coach did not let me play a single match for fear that the opposition would go after me with intent. My team won the championship. I still have the certificate.
