His very first appearance had a touch of uniquely Indian magic. Astonishment and incredulity went together. Could that headline in The New Indian Express be true? Could an unknown villager in coastal Karnataka really be faster than Usain Bolt? Something had to have been wrong with the recording, they said. But this was all too precise.
Srinivasa Gowda, running behind two tethered buffaloes in a track of paddy field slush, had taken a mere 13.62 seconds to finish 142 metres. What’s more, he did the first 100 metres in a mere 9.55 seconds - and Usain Bolt’s 100 m world record stands at 9.58 seconds! But before logical thoughts could be thought, there was the man...caught in what is now an iconic freeze-frame, worthy of the highest Orientalist romanticisation. The colour of the wet earth under his feet, an eight-pack torso glistening in sweat and slush, front leg thrown ahead in full Olympian regality, he was human poetry in motion. Very fast motion.
E M Forster would have approved. Women did too, and openly admired on social media. Soon Shashi Tharoor was tweeting, as was Anand Mahindra. Either get him to the Olympic trials, or make Kambala an Olympic event, he said. The Union Sports Minister, the SAI, they all sat up and took notice.
On Twitter, sports experts began unpacking the possible reasons that enabled him to be faster than a bolt of lightning. “It’s the buffaloes...the feet would have been in the air longer than for a normal sprinter,” they said.
Finally, Gowda himself spoke. A construction worker from Moodabidri, he was reluctant to shine in all that insta-glory. Even on the SAI offer of a trial, he demurred before relenting. You run with your heels in Kambala, not on your toes as track athletes do, he said.
Whatever else you theorise about him, he has his feet planted firmly on his native earth.