All sacrifices will seem justified once you make history
Long jumper Anju says training everyday while others play in paddy fields, will stand you in good stead
Dear me
LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF Dear 13-year-old Anju, Surely there are times when you wonder why your father doesn’t let you play with other teens in the paddy fields? Why he is keen to make you run the 25-metre or 50m races in the district competition? I know it hurts watching children go for a swim or frolic in the mud and not be able to join them. But ‘sacrifices’ will pay dividends of the kind nobody in India would have imagined.
Your parents have a plan because they can see in you a potential of being great, an athlete who would make the suburb of Cheeranchira glow on the world map. Years after you are done, people will say ‘wow, this is where Anju was born!’
So, off to the hostel in Kottayam where you will meet sports teacher KP Thomas. I know it won’t be easy for a young girl to live down feelings of being uprooted. The school is in a forest and that could have exacerbated the longing for home but for the Thomases. They will be a family that does its utmost to make you comfortable.
Slowly, it will start to seem worth it. Anju, there can’t be a better feeling than winning and after only a few weeks of training, you will be the best in state and national school competitions in the 100m hurdles, long jump and high jump.
Yes, the facilities will not be great in Kerala but that is a challenge most Indian sportspersons would face in the Noughties too, perhaps even now. It is just one of the reasons why your father always exhorted you to never give up.
And I know, you won’t give up. A CWG bronze and Asian Games gold would have been enough for many. But you are destined to fly. You will make history in Paris by becoming the first Indian to win a world championship medal in 2003.
At the 2004 Athens Olympics you will again go where no Indian has. Your leap of 6.83m will remain a national record even in 2017. You will climb to world No.4. Everything that your father made you do as a child will seem worth it then.
By then, Bobby (in training pic right) would have come into your life. He will be the coach and husband who staked his all to ensure you maximise potential. A bronze will be narrowly missed in the 2005 Worlds but trust you to produce your season’s best there. In that year, an Asian athletics gold will be followed by a gold in the IAAF World Athletics final. And the world would know where Cheeranchira is. Loads of love, Anju Bobby George