Simple Sakshi sticks to what she does best

RIO DE JANEIRO: They don’t make them this simple anymore. Sakshi Malik won bronze and in the midst of a scrum of media looking to touch her glory through selfies,

RIO DE JANEIRO: They don’t make them this simple anymore. Sakshi Malik won bronze and in the midst of a scrum of media looking to touch her glory through selfies, she smiled on bravely. An official of the wrestling federation behaved like a bully and hailed her with an obnoxious: “Idhar aao, pehle hum baat karenge media se. Kuch mat bolo (Come here, I will talk to the press. You keep quiet),” and the woman who has shown such tremendous courage out on the mat quailed in the face of the everyday reality of Indian sport.

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But any athlete that gets ahead through the morass that’s our sporting ethos is too brave to stay bogged down, and the moment the offending presence was removed, she was all bubbly and smiles again. And very much the girl next door.

ON A JET PLANE

The 23-year-old’s primary reason for getting into sport was to be able to get on a plane. “I was fascinated by airplanes. I figured that if I represent India I would get to fly abroad and be assured of a plane ride”. Right. Olympic success for a nation of a billion plus started with one young child in Rohtak looking at a leotard-clad wrestler in a newspaper and then dreaming her dream.

The route to success stems from a road paved with simplicity. As firmed up by the Russian school of sports training, champions can’t have distractions cluttering their head. The Soviet Olympics machine asked for a puritanical code of conduct from its achievers. “I don’t like noise, parties or too many people. I start getting agitated in crowds. I would rather be by myself.” Give her kadi-chawal and aloo parantha and Malik’s happiness is complete. A thousand Indianstyle pushups (sets of 50X20) on days of strength training is more her style rather than being gregarious on social media. “I didn’t even know I had a Facebook page till my brother informed me that he had created one.”

VIRTUAL AND THE REAL

She is not in sync with what’s the latest cool fad. “I have heard of this Pokemon Go thing. My brother (Sachin) drives around in the car to play it. I haven’t even seen it, but am curious. Will someone show me?” she smiles at her naivety.

Malik may not be well-versed with the virtual but she is spot on with the real. “I just want to live a peaceful life. I don’t like going out much, would rather just enjoy the fruit of the 12 years of hard work that have earned me this medal. I really don’t want any other enjoyment than stay peacefully at home.”

Does that mean she won’t compete again? “This is just the beginning. I have to go to Tok yo,” she dismisses the query.

She is fluid on her own. Not when she is being asked to toe the line. Like the instructions from above to endorse the PM’s Swatch Bharat programme. The poor girl repeatedly fumbled and it became a farce as she was made to repeat the lines till she said what they wanted her to say. Sad that sport must be hijacked by politics even at a nation’s only celebratory moment thus far in these Games. After all, a woman who has carved out her own niche despite being from such a misogynist state as Haryana wouldn’t really have done much had she been one for following prescribed norms.

CHEAT AND STAY CHEERY

500 sit ups a day is more her thing. Though like all of us, she does cheat a bit sometimes. “If I lose count midway through a set, I usually notch it up a bit and do a few less,” she laughs. Continuing in the vein of the pioneer, she has also moved away from the strict vegetarian regimen prescribed by Sushil Kumar and gang, albeit not entirely. “Kha leti hoon, but rare.”

Some other basics stay the same. Even when the West was floundering about with an obsessive high-carb diet, our wrestlers have traditionally struck to their ghee-makhan. Now, research by people like Dr. Tim Noakes – one of the pioneers of the Banting diet – has suddenly seen desi ghee jettisoned from the pariah list and touted as superb fat intake, right up there with basic animal fat.

Two days before a weigh in, she starves herself. All wrestlers are usually a couple of kilos above the weight category that they fight in. After the weigh in, they wolf down food like the starving individuals they are at that point. It’s a very strange world that Malik inhabits. She is such a pleasant sweet 23-yearold in person that one wonders where that aggression on the mat comes from. She is part of sport where officials talk down to achievers as they try to appropriate their success. In the middle of the chaos that’s Indian sport, once in a while an oasis like Malik pops up. Drink deep from this success, my countrymen, it’s not every day that sport escalates someone Indian from just a participant to a medal winner.