GUWAHATI: It’s daybreak and most of Guwahati is fast asleep. Only the occasional vroom of a vehicle interrupts the silence of the deserted streets. The roadside shops are firmly shut. The day, though, has begun at Sarusajai Sports Complex. The adjacent CRPF camp is bustling with activities. The badminton court has already played host to a couple of early-morning games.
Inside the Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium, host to the Sports Authority of Assam’s athletics academy, Nibedita Barman races with a bunch of her fellow trainees around the synthetic turf that encircles the football stadium. The woman she is really trying to catch up with, though, is a speck in the distance. Hima Das called this stadium home for only a brief period of around 10 months. She was spotted here during trails in January 2017, a rookie runner whose answer to ‘do you practice regularly?’ was ‘now and then’.
By November that year, she had set off on the next phase of her journey after being called up to the national camp. Yet, she remains an inescapable presence for these athletes, not only where they train, but in their homes and villages where they keep hearing the same phrase over and over again. Be like Hima.
“Earlier, in the villages, the focus was on going to school, getting proper education. After that came sports,” says Nipon Das, the coach who first stumbled upon Hima on this very turf. “After Hima’s success, it’s become sports first. People are looking at what she has done and how her life has changed and they want that for their kids.”Nipon has the numbers to back his claim up.
“Three-four years ago, we had only 30-40 kids doing athletics here,” he says. “Now it has gone up to around 130.” In his mind, there is only one reason for this explosion — Hima’s meteoric rise.Nibedita’s story is another example of how Hima has changed perceptions. She is 21 and has been with the academy for six months. Her family wanted her to focus on studies and complete schooling. But then, Hima happened and she was allowed to leave her village and travel to Guwahati to train under Nipon.
“If Hima had happened five or six years ago, who knows where athletes like Nibedita would have been now?” Nipon wonders aloud. The problem for Nipon and the Sports Authority of Assam now is dealing with the demand. Athletes from as far away as Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh approach him, demanding that he take them under his wing. There is no residential facility. There is a hostel at the complex for boxers and footballers and Nipon manages to accommodate a few there. Most of them are asked to take care of their own accommodation.
“These athletes who join us from other states don’t always stick around,” Nipon says. “They have to take care of their accommodation and cook for themselves. In many cases, they have enough eventually and go back home. The Assam government is planning to open a residential sports school next year,” he adds. That should ease their burden a bit.
Meanwhile, Hima remains as interested in the camp as its trainees are in her. “She calls regularly,” Nipon smiles. “She is still so passionate about football (the game she played before athletics). She was calling me yesterday (Thursday) to find out how the India-Oman match was going.”