YouTube Dronacharya for this Assam rhythmic gymnast
Upasha Niku Talukdar is a modern-day Ekalavya who has learnt rhythmic gymnastics from a digital Dronacharya.
But unlike the Mahabharata archer, the 10-year-old wasn’t rejected by any guru. It’s just that there isn’t any coach or trainer in the Northeast to teach what she is passionate about.
Upasha took to rhythmic gymnastics when she was barely 8. And with nobody around to teach her the steps and stances, she became a student of YouTube.
To be more precise, she was taking lessons from Ukrainians Anna Bessonova, Ekaterina Serebrianskaya and Tamara Yerofieieva, and Russians Irina Tchachina, Yevgeniya Kanayeva and Alina Kabaeva.
These six, among many of Upasha’s virtual teachers via YouTube, won 212 medals including Olympic between them in rhythmic gymnastics.
“She has always been flexible, twisting and turning and dancing to music. They day I saw her scratching her ear with her toes – because she was writing her homework – I decided she was cut out for gymnastics,” father Nikunja Talukdar, who runs a small pharmacy in the city, told HT.
In 2015, he took Upasha to gymnastics coach Ghanajyoti Das of National Institute of Sports here. After a test, Das suggested she was cut out for rhythmic gymnastics and regretted he, as an artistic gymnastics trainer, could not be of much help.
“I knew nothing about gymnastics except that the Russians are very good in it. The two of us googled and found many videos on rhythmic gymnastics on YouTube,” Talukdar said.
Upasha began copying the moves and stances, the rolls and stretches, the leaps and ways of catching the apparatuses – balls, clubs and rings in particular.
After she picked up the basics, Talukdar took her to Punjab for a 10-day course. But what worked for her were the lessons from the European legends via YouTube.
It showed when Upasha won two golds and a silver medal at the CBSE National Gymnastics organised in Radaur, Haryana this month. She got gold for the best routine with a ball, and tsilver for her routine with clubs.
“I want to represent India in the Olympics and win a medal in rhythmic gymnastics,” Upasha said.But her father knows she cannot rely on YouTube to gun for gold. “I have got through to a Russian trainer named Marina, with whom we communicate via Skype,” Talukdar said.
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