Sports is a big thing for me. I feel as a child we came back
to India when I was in the fourth standard and possibly we couldn’t devote
enough time to sport as needed. Now I am into sports with a vengeance. So right
now my car’s boot is always ready for sport and it always has the equipment and
other paraphernalia ready for any sport. I am ready to play every day. Right
now I am having a whale of a time. I swim, play water polo, badminton Sunday afternoon
underarm cricket and I run. That’s a whole of a lot of activities to be done. Its
tiring and I am not so sure how much the body can keep in pace, but for now, I am
enjoying it and quite frankly I don’t really care too much on other stuff.
The greatest fun I get from this sporty endeavor of mine is
the sports equipment. I love having the equipment ready to play. And I like
buying decent quality stuff. You should have the right footwear and the right racquets
and other stuff. No point compromising there. Jispa’s swim bag always has
adequate equipment. She has two three eye goggles, one specialized for back
stroke (dark mirror finish), a few swim caps and a lot of costumes. Normally she
needs one but during her swim meets she needs one for every race. This is done
so that after every race she can dry herself and get ready for the next race in
a dry costume.so she need not run to change in a wet costume. I saw her smart looking costumes drying
together and felt nice.
Now she started running so she needs specialized running
shoes. We took her to the sports shop where she tried on her shoes. If she is
going to run a bit she might as well buy decent shoes. Again here I think
Jasmine and I are living our childhood through her. She bought the Ultra light Skechers.
They were expensive but I don’t think I found them expensive. I don’t think
sports equipment is expensive at all. Surely they are high priced but
considering that you are going to play all the time in them, pound the floor a
gazillion times in them, they are to my mid worth it if you find them
comfortable. In fact I think Jispa’s shoes are more expensive than any I must
have bought for myself. But hell, if you must play a sport, play it well. I do
think she needs running shorts as well but that is Jasmine’s territory and in any
case it too will come when the time is right.
A lot of this is
wasted over the years. We surely have more swim goggles then we actually need,
there is a little amount of waste but when you swim as much as she swims and
you train as hard as she trains this is but a small price to pay. Equipment
must not stop you from performing. There are swim suits for 40 thousand bucks
as well. But they are designed to shave off 0.01 seconds. That too at an
international arena. They won’t work at our level. For one – there so much a
technique will do, secondly, we have manual stop watches with a greater error
rate for timings. It just won’t help as much. When she comes to that level,
hopefully I would manage to afford that much. There is one champion who I see
comes from a very modest background. I see her swim. Her swimming costumes, cap
and goggles aren’t branded at all. She swims with heart. At our swim meet I had
a few prizes to give out; I just called her out quietly and gave her the kickboard.
She is awesome. She swims lovely. When you see the other contestants coming in their
Audi SUVs and wearing expensive costumes and caps, I love to see her dad ferry
her in a scooter and I see her dive in with heart and come out trumps. That’s my
favorite champion.
Sometimes I feel we give in too much. Should we do less? It’s
a delicate balance. I like to let Jispa get her stuff, but I try to tell her to
value it. She had a circular from school taking them to a ski trip in Swiss
mountains or something. Priced at an awesome 2.7 lakhs or something. Jasmine
asked her if she wanted to go. Of course she said yes. Then I stepped in and
put a price perspective, explaining the cost of our holidays. “In that case “she
said, “nopes, I don’t think so.” Many times when we are buying costumes and the
costumes look and feel the same, I simply ask Jispa to consider the price as
well. Yesterday we bought the Skechers but while she was trying out the Nike shoes
I told her to see prices between the ones she liked. Don’t buy what you don’t like,
but between two you like, check the tag dude. It’s cool to check the tag and
buy. Completely cool.
In fact as a
marketing person I find it stupid not to check the tag. Is it worth it?
