Sports mind

I guess it’s important to feel good as well. Brands make you feel good. Jispa has been swimming pretty good these days and I like the way her strokes have improved. And with the amount of swimming she has been doing, she did run out of costumes. Jasmines keeps around four to five costumes for her. You need these many if you are competing. In a typical competition she would take part in 5 races and you need to come out, change into a fresh costume and remain dry till your next race. So jasmine went yesterday to buy Jispa’s costumes. These are among the few things that I don’t like to see price. You get simple Indian costumes for around 500 bucks and you get the speedos or the even higher end Arena for upwards of 1500 bucks. Jispa prefers the Arena. She says it’s lighter in the water. And somehow the material and feel is much better. Though I am quite sure it would not influence her timing one bit.
As a kid, we hardly got the right material to play with. Not that I played any sport seriously but even a simple TT racquet would be the cheap one if any. I like buying good sports equipment. If you play the sport you have to buy the equipment. Many times it’s even a bit about feeling good. You can debate forever about how much impact it may have but there is no denying that having a better brand on your side makes you feel better. When I first started playing cricket I too had the hangover of days gone by. I did not have my own kit. No bat, no proper tracks, no proper shoes. The first thing I bought for myself was cricketing gloves. I was pretty proud of them. Then I remember buying pads and thigh guards. Finally only about a year back I bought proper cricket shoes. I would make do with the running sneakers till I realized at my age I was slipping and falling and not having rubber spikes on my soles was a bad thing. I even relished buying my squash racquet then upgrading it and then breaking it and buying another one in its place. That was really fun. I love the smell of new equipment, the feel of new equipment.
One colleague once remarked – Jispa is spoilt nah? I was like – no she isn’t. She definitely isn’t. But then I decoded the statement. Ya. I answered she is privileged. She definitely has more resources at her disposal than what I had at my age. She gets more shopping, more fun, more games, more books, and a lot more. We try and give her more but we try and not spoil her. Spoilt is a relative term. Sure we take the car and go roaming about. We don’t travel 2nd sleeper non AC. We stay good, we eat ok. But we don’t have a full time maid after her. She doesn’t get down from the car and expect someone will pick her bag. She has no right to on the air conditioning on her own. She walks where possible and she eats largely what’s decided upon. Sure she is privileged but I wouldn’t say she is spoilt.
And if I don’t buy three Arena costumes for my kid who swims 12 to 15 hours a week, what’s the point of taking shit from office. Hence when Jasmine called me and asked me, I said – sure. Buy them. She swims so much, she is doing decently well, the least of all she deserves is a costume she likes wearing. I don’t want her to go in the pool, eyeing another girl’s costume.
I was talking with my boss the other day. His son plays tennis at the inter-state level. There the costs are phenomenal. Costs for shoes every month, racquets, gutting, coach, a marker, etc. It easily comes to around a million rupees (10 lakhs) a year. and what do you make back from it? probably nothing. Unless you seriously break into the top league. Then I look at Jispa’s costume that lasts a year and look at the price and think – sure kid – buy one more. Here.
Here expenses will come if she breaks into something really big later. If she has to go abroad to train, then she buys those really specialized costumes, and does some serious Olympic level training. But till then I am a relatively happy soul and Jispa is relatively privileged girl.
Side note – she met and saw Rehan Poncha train at her swimming pool. He is India’s swimming hope at the upcoming London Olympics. She spoke to him about his training and food. And more importantly she saw his swim. She was gushing about it and was pretty excited. “He went so fast”. Jispa was lucky to see it. Champions are champions and when you play the sport seriously you realize what a champion is. Jispa could see the champion, his strokes, his power and his speed. She said – ‘dad, when he came out of the pool, his body looked like a triangle. Really big shoulders and a small waist… and his calf muscles had lines...”. I was happy that she saw a champion through the eyes of a sports person. I have always felt that one must play a sport. In nothing else you will understand a nuance to life. You will have a sportsperson’s mind and a sportsperson’s eye. Just being a dad to a swimmer has changed my perspectives to sports in general, I can only imagine what it might have done to Jispa. Mission accomplished.