I was running with Kavita early one morning around sun-up in the late but lingering monsoon of 2023 down a part-dirt-part-concretized road that connected the cluster of villages that is the region of Dhasa. The air was heavy and moist. It had us sweating no more than a kilometre into our run. But the seemingly endless expanse of lush green fields after a night of light rain showers meant there was plenty of scenic motivation to keep putting one foot after the other. Kavita, like so many others at Junoon, is a talented athlete, with the unique ability to go the distance and go fast. She would be a great candidate for the 1500m track race, given her long limbs, easy strides, lithe frame, naturally correct posture and stamina. We train in the mornings and evenings – strengthening, building up endurance and working at her speed, so her foundations and preparations to compete are composite and strong.
As a rule, the kids don’t train unless they’ve had a bite before sessions. So I casually but intentionally asked her, “What was your morning snack today?”
Without missing a beat, she said, “Didi, I ate some leftover bhakri (a thickened and roasted wheat flatbread) from last evening.”
What about your morning glass of milk?” I probed, knowing how much she cherishes it.
One of our two cows died last week Didi and the one remaining can’t provide enough milk for all five of us siblings. So each of us is now drinking milk on alternate days, turn by turn.
Her explanation on the division of milk was so matter-of-fact that it hurt. In a reality not very far from this one, a mother would be running after her children, chasing them to guzzle a glass of milk before they got on with their day. This smack of reality, so reflective of the paradoxes we choose to notice, ignore or offset, hit very hard. The way I saw it: One of our star runners could not adequately fuel herself before a training session because she was sharing everything on her plate with the rest of her family.
The way Kavita – our carefree little victim of deprivation – saw it: Everything that was hers belonged equally to her family. A glass of milk every other day was a fair arrangement with a lone cow around.
The barely arguable assumption that children anywhere and everywhere are rarely ever selfish notwithstanding,
Kavita was well beyond her years. Adversity does that. Responsibility does that. One grows up faster and yet retains the goodness, lightheartedness and softness of a child.
Children are natural givers, sharers and carers. And they have a more simplistic view of things.
Granted that part of being an adult is about constantly discovering the child in oneself; For better or for worse, I was the grown-up in the fold and I couldn’t help myself from attempting to eradicate the malnutrition epidemic. These kids had to eat enough if they were to train hard and we couldn’t let all this potential come to nought!
Kavita was only one example. I started to anticipate and approximate just how many glasses of milk were not going into our kids for similar reasons.
A few more kilometres into our run, when my hurt had settled, there was space for calmer, more systematic thought:
Our Junoon wanted to nurture the next generation of emerging athletes and artistes. We were working at the grassroots level, in a remote rural region, where the most primary needs of water, electricity, nutrition and connectivity are hardly met. We are battling challenges that a lot of the world is not and may well not be conscious of. We need to work with what we have. Start where we are. And make the best of the scenario, on the field, today.
In the larger context, we have been dealt the weaker hand but it’s about playing well with whatever it is that has been dealt to us. And there has to come a time when none of these children are looked upon as underprivileged because they are indeed gifted in ways most are not.
The bottomline: We were short of cows owned per family not human capability.
I had never hitherto practiced rationality in an enraged state. But I would have to learn to. As artistes and athletes, so much of our training involves preparing the mind to take on and perform what many cannot – whether creatively, intellectually, temperamentally, physically or otherwise. The harsher the fire, the stronger the metal, yes. But the maintenance of that highest quality of metal was key.
How were Kavita and the many other talented children at Junoon going to be adequately nourished, without snatching away what was the rightful share of the rest of their families?
Our concern shifted gears from Kavita locking in the required hours of training and achieving her best timings to “can we first source, set and get their nutrition together”?
Junoon came to Dhasa as an Arts initiative to empower and take the Classical Arts where it was neither present nor entirely appreciated. Junoon has gone everywhere it has, with the same objective. What makes Dhasa different is that it was our first playground, breeding ground and now, solid establishment.
The progressing stages of our stronghold in this region has been an education in prioritizing. The Arts. The Kids. The Empowerment. The Maintenance (Sustenance). In the order that every stage has called for.
Our ‘Kavita’s are certainly more empowered. The Arts have found a comfortable and spacious home in the thicket and wild of Saurashtra. For the inhabitants of this home, the future representatives of our ancient art forms, the next line of competitive athletes and the complete Junoon vision to play out and hold out, we need herds of cattle nursing this ecosystem.
We need a daily supply of bananas and multiple glasses of milk, we need crushed peanut, jaggery and date concoctions for instant protein, energy and recovery and we need a platter of good sugars, starches, fibres and fats at the ready.
We have a steady band of givers, who have stood behind our Junoon, rock solid, to keep the child in our children alive; to ensure their childhoods, dreams, bodies and potentials are well fed. Kavita and her friends, seniors, juniors – everyone on the Junoon squad – have never been on an empty or half-empty stomach since that run in the sun, where the prevalence and paradox of hunger and deprivation in a relatively prosperous rural region rained heavily down on me.
They eat. They train. They grow. They are children with capacities beyond comprehension. They make no excuses from sun-up to sun-down, chipping away at multiple pursuits and we cut no corners so they continue to do so…
The race is long. We constantly have distances to go. But we hope to have all the cows we need to keep our ‘Kavita’s running strong.
This is Junoon.
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