‘I FLY INTO A RAGE EASILY AND HENCE DON’T TALK TO TOO MANY PEOPLE. THAT IS WHY I MISS HOME’

done with sport.” When she does get time, Barman keeps a diary and listens to music, Bhawaia being her favourite. With songs written mainly in Kamtapuri, Bhawaia is a form of folk music popular among Rajbongshis in northern West Bengal. Barman can more than hold a tune but even though we don’t ask, she says ‘I’m not going to sing now’.

Sarkar’s getting her to SAI started a journey that is perhaps halfway from its end. They first met around Durga Puja in 2011. “I am from Jalpaiguri and on a visit home some of my students [Sarkar has been a coach at SAI since 1992] asked me to take a look at this young high jumper. My first impression wasn’t that impressive since she does not have the body type of a high jumper. Later that year, she won a schools’ competition in Ludhiana and I was told by Samir Das, who had put Barman through the paces earlier, to take her to SAI. Otherwise, he said, she would perhaps become a daily-wage earner. I thought, if she is already winning medals, clearing 1.57m with rudimentary training, she could be a national junior-level competitor. And that is how she came here.”

The switch to heptathlon happened in 2013. “With her frame, regularly clearing 1.90m or more, the kind required to win international medals [the high jump gold in Jakarta went at 1.96m], would be difficult. So I thought, why not put her in an event where she can win silver or bronze at the Asian Games. Even when she was just doing high jump, I tested her ability in long jump, saw that her arms are strong and felt a medal would be possible if we could put in three or four years of work. That is how this started,” says Sarkar.

Barman says trying out six new events didn’t intimidate her. “It was a lot of work but I liked it. Because it also had Sir focusing more on me than his other trainees; me, the short, squat one. That felt good,” she says.

“What helped is her ability to grasp things quickly. In three months, she made rapid progress in the javelin. Same with shot put and long jump. Then, in 2014, I saw that 5482 points fetched an Asian Games bronze in heptathlon,” says Sarkar. That was also Barman’s first experience of the Games. She finished fifth, on 5178 points, but Sarkar knew they were on course.

For someone who didn’t know what the Asian Games were when she started high jump while at Patkata Primary School; for someone who took to sport because it could get her a job and her family a better life; for someone whose home is still a tin shack, the tin replacing straw bale walls not long ago, Barman’s come a long way.

She says she has stopped her father from working — he used to drive a cycle van — even though he has recovered from the stroke he suffered in 2009 because, “I am a big girl now, I earn. My parents have struggled through life. They worked very hard to bring us up. I want them to take it easy now. I want to provide for them. This is my responsibility,” she says.

Barman is weighing job offers from the Indian Railways and the West Bengal government but says she is in no hurry. “I could have got a job in the sports quota a lot earlier but Sir didn’t allow me, saying that taking up a job usually leads to the focus shifting. Also, I now get money from the TOP [Target Olympic Podium] Scheme,” she says. TOPS is a programme run by the union sports ministry to support potential Olympic medal-winners.

So what now? Working on my temper, she says, winding up the media interaction on the day of her arrival here. Barman’s short fuse has led to run-ins with Sarkar and she even left SAI once. Healing injuries is priority too, says Barman, when we meet for the third time, at a felicitation; she’s averaging one event every day since getting here on September 7.

The Olympics is a target she hasn’t started dreaming about yet. “If Sir shows me the way, I will,” she says.