Sport The Necessary Education

well uh

good afternoon i think we’ve heard a lot

of talks um

but well here’s mine it’s titled

the necessary education so while i am

talking just keep

this topic at the back of your mind it’s

called

the necessary education that is sport

so the educator and philosopher dr john

g higgins mentioned that

education is the ability to meet life

situations

now having said that when people ask me

what is your educational qualification

along

with my degree in commerce and my

master’s degree in business

administration

i add with great pride sports person and

olympian

and of course after representing india

at two olympic games

winning four commonwealth games medals

16 national titles in 17 years and

retiring

undefeated as india’s number one player

i can say with great conviction

that a lot of my education came along

this journey

well while we all share this world that

we live in

i think our life situations are unique

to each one of us

and i believe

our past was when really when the world

was seemingly

static and stationary well our present

is almost where the world is spinning

almost

desperate to throw us off well what is

our future going to look like

i believe our future is going to be even

more frantic

it’s going to be unpredictable um it’s

going to be uncertain

and it’s going to be extremely dynamic

we’re actually bracing ourselves for a

time

where we are speculating what are the

kind of skills

um what are the kind of education that’s

going to be required

to meet jobs that haven’t been invented

yet

in on a planet that might or might not

survive

right so we have never been more scared

and unprepared in our lives

now this is clear that the winds of

change

are upon us they are about us so how are

we going to go about combating this

change

well the first thing that comes to mind

is education right

um and we’re from india when we say

education we typically think of

academics

um of course this in india

means you know stuffing the kids heads

with

a lot of material a lot of knowledge um

in a seemingly systematic

manner well that’s not all today we’re

also looking at

conquering the queues by which i mean

not not the ones that we curse at

airports or the invisible ones we find

ourselves in at government offices

it’s really the iq the intelligence

quotient

it’s the eq the emotional quotient it’s

the pq

the physical quotient and it’s the aq

that’s been added now the adaptability

quotient and of course the

sq the spirituality quotient so some of

us might prefer to

know it as the social media quotient

right

so we’re all looking for solutions um

you know to find

our way in in this ever frantic world

for me i found a lot of the solutions

through sport and around the sports

arena

for me sport taught me less about

winning

and more about living so let me tell you

um i was a very stubborn systematic

um you know sort of individualistic sort

of person who was very averse to change

the only way i would accept change is if

you told me at the end of it

nothing would be altered or different

right

i was also this extremely shy person

who could not even make a reservation

a table reservation at a restaurant even

if it was over the phone

however then sport happened

and things changed and i’ll that’s the

story i want to share with you

this afternoon so

on my 16th birthday when my parents

asked me what i wanted as a gift

i actually told them i wanted to move

from mumbai

to the southern city of bengaluru to

pursue my badminton training now

this was at a time when girls didn’t

leave

home at such a young age but seeing my

passion for the sport my

parents agreed i came to bangalore for

the first time stayed

without my parents everything was new

the people the weather the food

when i was in mumbai i couldn’t get up

with an alarm clock now

in bangalore i wasn’t ever late for 4 am

training session

i changed my mode of warm-up it actually

involved me pushing my two-wheeler

vehicle up the windsor manor slope for

those who know that area of bangalore

because it just didn’t have enough power

to see me to the top

so that was my warm-up going to my

practice sessions

and and then thereafter i shifted to a

government

training center after that where again

it was a different world

very basic hostile accommodation

diet was cold food with semi-cooked

chapatis

there were a lot of creatures around

because it was quite a wild area

we’ve seen snakes in the badminton hall

and of course the playing conditions

which was the most important were

challenging as well because the

badminton court match were torn

a lot of times we were told to practice

when there were no shuttlecocks

available

so um i think you know as i went on in

my career there was a lot more adapting

to do

but i did it because of my love for the

sport

i found the strength i found the

determination i found the willingness

and i really found the bent of mind to

accept

and adapt to situations

well we come to this time in 1996

when i was in denmark and i secured a

silver medal at the world junior

championships

that was being the first indian to do so

now when i came back from denmark after

training uh

my first training session i was

obviously walling onto court at this

heady championy sort of feeling

and um yeah i was playing carefree i was

playing careless

uh just to be summoned out or caught

by my coach who said what’s going on the

tournament’s over

get your focus back play seriously or

sit out

all that elation just evaporated right

then and there

then there was this time uh when i

almost missed out on

a commonwealth games medal due to the

carelessness of my team staff

who actually informed me that my

quarterfinal match was actually

in the evening when it was scheduled in

the morning

um it was a good it was my good fortune

that my father actually called me on the

dormitory land line

where he was staying to wish me luck and

that’s when i realized that my match was

scheduled to start in an hour

now i had not prepared my kit bag wasn’t

packed

no breakfast i had no sense of timing of

the shuttle bus to take me to the

tournament venue

which was almost 45 minutes away and

i will never forget that level of

emotion

i was angry i was nervous

i was feeling let down almost cheated

in a way also feeling very determined

um to actually you know get over the

situation

somehow i got to the tournament venue in

time

without any warm-up got on court won the

match

and secured a medal for india and

[Applause]

thank you and um i think it was just the

fact that i could keep my wits about me

in in this situation where the emotions

were running so high

and um you know today we see success

failures

detours some on our own account and some

on the account of others

they will ebb and flow but it’s very

important that the balance has to come

from within

you have to stay neutral

well of course carrying these lessons

along year on year

i managed to retain um my senior

national title

um and this really came

amongst various situations right

first of all the format of the game

changed as i was playing

then we had different opponents who had

different strategies

you know i had the pressure of being the

underdog at certain times being the

favorite at others

and um you know at a time where you know

we’ve

dealt with opponents who were blatantly

cheating

uh sometimes being so unwell that i

couldn’t even sustain a pre-match

warm-up

but you still managed to go on and win

and at the end of it all

i did win my nine consecutive senior

national singles titles

um in a row equaling the record of my

mentor an idol

the legendary padmashi prakash parkour

so through all this it was really about

chasing excellence i was my own

competition i wanted to be better than i

was yesterday

and it was really about approaching

excellence

with a touch of my own creativity

well and then more change happened i

um actually forced change upon myself

got myself

out of my comfort zone now i had a lot

more talking to do

right i had to talk right from

the washer man to the airline staff to

the queen of england even who we met

at an event during the commonwealth

games

once i became a little more comfortable

speaking for me

the early days speaking to more than two

people at the same time was a crowd

well things had changed also being a

very individualistic person

i had to play on a lot of teams as i was

representing india

so the team spirit was extremely

important

and then a year before

my last nationals that i played my wrist

had become

extremely painful in fact the doctors

couldn’t diagnose it well enough

which means they couldn’t treat it well

enough

my wrist had become so painful that at

times i couldn’t even hold up a cup of

tea or a toothbrush even

and it was this when i realized the

importance of my squad

by which i mean my parents and my family

who were far away from me

but they made things comfortable for me

and kept my motivation

high my friends in the hostel who in

fact helped me with the daily chores

they drove me to

practice sessions and back they set up

my weights

in the gym they even comb my hair

on certain situ in on certain occasions

and then of course there was my coach

who reject my entire training schedule

because by then i was able to practice

only one session in a week

my physio in fact went out of her way to

research

different ways of healing me and i

clearly remember the last session before

my tournament started she said

you know i don’t think you’re going to

be able to play this tournament

well not only did i play the tournament

but i actually won it

setting the record

you know it’s a mystery how that

happened

um because the pain and the acute pain

in fact came back the very next day

but it’s that time when i realized that

anything is possible if you work in a

team

and in today’s day and age where

expectations where

pressures and competition is so high

it’s just going to be an advantage if we

learn

to actually work together and

collaborate and you actually have people

supporting you right from your core

squad to your community and beyond

that’s always going to be an advantage

right um so we all know that sports

is unscripted things change very fast in

sport and they’re constantly changing

right

so just to give you an example the

typical reaction time

in badminton is between 0.2 to 0.3

seconds

and we’ve seen smash speeds going as far

as

um 420 kilometers per hour

just to compare tennis six foot ten

american

ace john isner has hit um a

serve at about 253 kilometers per shoe

about the bretli bowl at 161 kilometers

per hour

having said this um you know

we sports people have learned to be

mindful because when an object is coming

at you at these speeds there’s not much

else that you can think about

well but you need to do a lot of

thinking because you need to take the

right decision at the right time and

then have your muscles react with your

mind

let me tell you where this quality once

played out so i was taking my then seven

month old daughter out for a stroll um

in the lane

behind our apartment and uh my house

helps two children age five and seven

they joined us and

as we were walking we saw this huge dog

coming charging at us i literally froze

but in that fraction of a second i

actually pushed the two older kids into

a bungalow compound to my right and

yelled at them to shut the gate

i didn’t have enough time to push the

stroller through so i turned the

stroller

in such a way that my daughter’s face

was facing

the bushes and couldn’t be seen now i

stood exposed but it was okay as long as

the kids were safe

i could have handled the situation it

was just luckily that at that point the

car drove into the lane and the dog got

distracted and stopped bounding

and now when i look back i think it was

just this quality of being mindful of

being

alert of the present situation of

actually taking the right decision under

pressure

that really helped me right

um yeah so they say education is not

merely the accumulation of knowledge

but is the formation of character

and i believe that

through my journey um i retired in 2006

which was hard uh hard enough but that

when i came back to mumbai to

home i realized my maternal grandmother

was very terminally ill

i got three months to spend with her

before she passed away it was also a

time i suffered a relationship breakup

and also realized that my dad’s business

had hit rock bottom

now it was very easy for me to feel

bitter about the situation because

considering the

current achievements and advancements in

sport

the fame and money that i had earned

then

wasn’t good enough um i looked around i

saw friends

in corporate jobs um i saw them in

interesting professions

and you know i i just didn’t know what

to do because

um i i seemed i felt helpless and

felt all the sacrifice and all the hard

work and everything had gone to waste

but it was not so because i turned to

the lessons that i’d learned from sport

to keep me going right

and i believe till today these are

the traits and the lessons that have

helped me

and and carried me through so

when i think back my life situation

which started

from having a single-minded focus on the

sport of badminton

to then winning nine consecutive

national singles titles

to now being a single mom i think these

are really the character traits that

have helped me

and helped me in good stead and i

believe

that if me can then

you can do right um

yes the world is changing things are

extremely dynamic

but it’s really not the skills that are

going to hold us in good stead going

forward

but the character traits that we learn

along our journey

one might argue and say that you these

character traits can be developed in a

non-sporting atmosphere

well perhaps they can but i feel that

there’s perhaps no

one forum that can teach you all this

together

and naturally and give you constant

opportunities to learn and put it to

practice

so while we’re talking about education

while we cannot con control the external

factors we can control what’s within

let us have an education that helps us

develop

inside out and in today’s world

that is the necessary education that

we’re talking about

and that necessary education is sport

thank you so much