Where are Comaneci’s young gymnasts now? - Hindustan Times
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Where are Comaneci’s young gymnasts now?

Kolkata | By
Dec 17, 2020 01:37 PM IST

“This is awesome,” tweeted Nadia Comaneci, the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 in the Olympics, and the video aquired a life of it’s own, and one its effects was that Khan and Azajuddin were inducted into the Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre in Kolkata on the recommendation of Union sports minister Kiren Rijiju.

Jashika Khan realises early in the phone call that a short tutorial on street dance would help the conversation. She draws a deep breath. “Hip-hop is a dance form,” is how her explainer for dummies begins. “There are other forms such as urban, contemporary and freestyle. I do all styles but more of hip-hop. It’s urban hip-hop that I like. That’s what helped me learn cartwheels and back-flips.”

Those cartwheels and backflips--performed in the indigo blue skirt and white top of a school uniform with a satchel strapped to her shoulder--changed Khan’s life and that of Mohammed Azajuddin, her gravity-defying friend. The act was filmed by their dance teacher Sekhar Rao and uploaded as a 15-second video in Facebook (“to inspire other children, nothing else,” he says).

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“This is awesome,” tweeted Nadia Comaneci, the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 in the Olympics, and the video aquired a life of it’s own, and one its effects was that Khan and Azajuddin were inducted into the Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre in Kolkata on the recommendation of Union sports minister Kiren Rijiju.

That was on September 5, 2019. For the next six months and some, Khan, 12, and Azajuddin, 14, learnt gymnastics six days a week. “We would train from 6 to 9:30 in the morning and from 4 to 7 in the evening, three apparatus at each session,” says Ajazuddin speaking separately. “Floor exercises are my favourite.” It was wonderful, says Khan who, like Azajuddin, spoke in Hindi. “Training on bars, the beam and the floor, doing routines we would only do on the road or a maidan (field),” says Khan.

Then came the hard lockdown for Covid-19 in March. Khan and Ajazuddin have been home since with no idea of when they will be able to return. “I want to go back as soon as possible,” says Khan. “Her health had improved. She was happy and so were we,” says her mother Reshma.

“I really want to go to SAI and resume training. But I also know that when I go there, I will miss home,” says Azajuddin.

As the lockdown restrictions eased, Khan and Azajuddin resumed training with Rao. All three live in Garden Reach, an area name after a ship building company in south-west Kolkata near the Hooghly river. “They spend most of their days with me,” says Rao, who works in film choreography and is also dance and physical education teacher at a city school.

In 2013, Rao set up a dance school hoping to make a living from it. “But for it to be a good academy, it needed the infrastructure I couldn’t afford. No one came. Then I focused on children from slums in the area. I would organise a talent hunt and select 10-15 boys and girls and teach them for free. I teach around 80 kids now,” says Rao, speaking in Bangla.

That is how Khan and Azajuddin came to meet him. “Lovely and Ali (Khan’s and Azajuddin’s pet names) would pick up very quickly. They started with hip-hop before changing to urban. B-boying (or Breaking, a dance form now a sport inducted into the 2024 Olympic programme) enhances flexibility. You do not need soft mattresses for it. B-boying made them fearless. But they never trained in gymnastics. It was only dance,” says Rao.

Dance is important for both. “Bahut sochna padega (Will have to think a lot),” says Azajuddin when asked which he would choose if he could pursue either dance or gymnastics. “At SAI, in our room, I would play music and dance on my own. I really don’t want to let it go but I don’t want to let go of gymnastics either.” Khan says she tries to practice what she learnt at SAI and learn “new things from Sir.”

Like at SAI, they train twice daily at the dance school, a 30-minute walk for neighbours Khan and Azajuddin. “Sir has said there could be some competitions so we are training hard,” says Khan. With school now closed, that is pretty much all she does, says Reshma who works in a store. Khan’s father is a driver. Azajuddin’s parents work in a nearby tea warehouse.

Their days are long with a lot of dance and a bit of schoolwork, but through them all they wait for the phone call that will take them back to a life they didn’t know existed before Rao’s video caught Comaneci’s attention.

“Papa has tried calling them a number of times,” says Azajuddin, referring to SAI. “No one answers.”

“We have been told that their hostel is yet to open,” says Reshma.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Dhiman Sarkar is based in Kolkata with over two decades as a sports journalist. He writes mainly on football.

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