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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Mint-on-sunday/  Where’s the fight, pal? Lessons from squash and karate
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Where’s the fight, pal? Lessons from squash and karate

Good players test you not so much with their technique, but with their mettle

Photo: PTIPremium
Photo: PTI

Most of us, I imagine, have favourite stories from when we indulged in one sport or another. Me, I’ve tried a lot of sports—squash, badminton, running, tennis, football, basketball, hiking, karate, cricket—though, in every one of them, I never rose above the mediocre. But there were plenty of stories. They pop up in my mind now and then, making me smile or cringe or something else. In this column, let me offer you two.

The squash partner

When I got to university in the US as a graduate student, an old school friend suggested I meet one of his friends, an undergraduate called Nancy. Nancy and her roommate invited me to dinner in their airy, second-floor apartment. They were warm and welcoming, and had any number of questions about me, India, our mutual friend... and then we talked about sports. Turned out Nancy played squash. In fact, it turned out Nancy was on the university’s squash team.

Now I had been playing a lot of squash over the previous couple of years, at my college and at home in Hyderabad. I couldn’t pass up this chance to test my skills against someone I knew had to be pretty good. So Nancy and I arranged to play.

A few minutes into the first time we played, Nancy actually complimented me—one of those memories that still makes me smile. “You’re quick, you know," she said, “and you have some pretty good strokes." But then—and there’s no other way to put this—she wiped the floor with me. Game after game, session after session, one rout after another.

The strongest memory I have of her is from when she handed me the ball to serve after she had won yet another one-sided game. As our eyes met, she wore a tiny, baffled smile. She spoke not a word, but something in her face said it loud and clear: “Good strokes, fine and dandy, but where’s the fight, pal? When are you going to compete?"

So many years later, that look on her face is etched in my mind. But right then, I told myself: I don’t care how, I don’t care what it takes out of me—but I’m going to win this next game. And so we played, and I hustled and dived and thought and scrambled and pushed myself harder than I had ever done on a squash court—maybe even anywhere. It was one physically wrenching, mentally exhausting game—just one!—but I won.

Nancy gave me another look I still remember, as I handed her the ball for a change. This one spelled “r-e-s-p-e-c-t". No matter that she then went on to beat me several more times. At least I had won once, and our games were now closer.

The good players, they test you not so much with their technique. After all, everyone can learn the strokes. No, it’s their mettle. When you can match that, you’re learning to compete.

The karate bruises

For three years, I practised Shotokan karate with a small group near where I lived, led by an astonishingly limber older man who had a flowing white beard and a black belt. The best thing about the group, though, was that none of us were really interested in belts. We just wanted to practise, three times a week. That suited my temperament just fine.

Every one of those sessions was hard work, leaving me sweaty and worn out. There were times when our leader would walk in and announce: “Today we’re going to do 1,000 kicks." I’d gulp, unable to even imagine such a task, such a gargantuan number. But before we really had time to think about it, he’d have us lined up and off we’d go—10 kicks to take us the length of the room, 10 kicks back, again and again, on and on. Through 70, and 267, and 585, and finally, 1,000.

Those kicking sessions taught me a thing or two about willpower, and the value of simply getting going on a big task. Those are lessons I treasure and use even today. But some other karate sessions often reminded me of my games with Nancy on the squash court.

These were the times when we would pair up and do battle: one attacking, one defending. We were learning self-defence techniques, after all, and so we had to figure out how to use them to defend ourselves in real situations. So we were told that if these battles were to mean anything, we had to make them as real as possible. But I didn’t fully comprehend just how real—until two things happened.

First, I got painfully bruised on my forearms from ineffectively trying to ward off my opponent’s full-blooded kicks and punches. Second, as he in turn coolly deflected whatever I threw at him, our otherwise soft-spoken leader suddenly yelled at me from the sidelines: “What’s it, you scared of hurting him? Or are you scared he’ll hurt you back when it’s his turn?"

It was really the same question Nancy had asked with her eyes, back on the squash court: “Where’s the fight, pal?"

This day, his words got my goat, as they were fully intended to. So somehow, I found the wherewithal to punch and kick with full-blooded vigour and intent. My opponent, a black belt himself, was far too smooth and accomplished for me to actually get to him. But there were at least a few times when I managed to hurry his block, or when my fist reached a little too close to his nose before he was able to turn it aside. On one of my kicks, I could swear I felt my toes actually brush the fabric of his gi (the white uniform we wore). That’s how close I got.

Again, I knew, it was about mettle. When I learned to match my opponent’s with some of my own, that’s when I really started learning karate.

Sadly, there’s no squash or karate in my life any more. But once in a while, the mettle serves me well.

Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His latest book is Final Test: Exit Sachin Tendulkar.

Twitter: @DeathEndsFun

Death Ends Fun: https://dcubed.blogspot.com

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Published: 29 Aug 2015, 11:37 PM IST
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