The courtyard outside Basana Barman’s house is a flurry of activity. A teenaged boy is atop the corrugated roof plucking mango leaves while a group of women huddle together on the verandah preparing offerings for worship. A table fan buzzes in front of a khaki-clad police constable seated at the gate.
“It is going to be a very special puja this time,” says Basana about the next day’s event, an annual ritual of worshipping Kali a day before Mahalaya that her family follows in Patkata, this nondescript village in Jalpaiguri district of northern West Bengal. “Four dhakis have been hired to beat the traditional drum. Everyone will come; our relatives, friends and neighbours. There will be khichuri, sweets and many other things.”
Her sister-in-law Nani joins in: “After all, this is the puja at the champion ’s house,” she says, an exultant stress on the word.
The champion is Swapna Barman, Basana’s 22-year-old daughter, who became the first Indian woman to win a gold in heptathlon at the Jakarta Asian Games in August this year.
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It was an autumn evening in 1996 when Basana gave birth to Swapna on the floor of their mud hut. Coming after two sons and a daughter, Swapna was another mouth to feed from the meagre earnings of her husband Panchanan, a rickshaw-van puller. “My first thought was she will fight it out,” says Basana. “When we could feed three others, we would be able to spare a fistful of rice for this little one too.”
Swapna became interested in sports from childhood. She was particularly good at high jump. In 2006, when she won gold at the district high jump contest for primary students, she ushered in her life’s first big turning point. The late Samir Das, member of the Raikot Para Sporting Association (RPSA), a sports academy in Jalpaiguri, spotted her and immediately took her under his wings. Under his mentoring, she began training with Sukanta Sinha, a former athlete. The following December, she went on to win gold at the State level.
Double shifts
Das also helped raise funds to buy a cycle for Basana so that she could bring Swapna to the training centre 8 km away. “Both mother and daughter were extremely dedicated,” recalls Sinha. “Swapna never missed a session. She was extremely focussed and worked very hard.” When a cerebral stroke crippled Panchanan, Basana took to plucking tea leaves in the nearby gardens, earning ₹55-65 per day, but no amount of work nor double shifts kept her from ferrying Swapna to the training centre.
What they lacked in resources, Swapna’s parents more than made up for with enthusiasm and encouragement. They made it a point to attend all her tournaments in the district. Before the stroke felled him, Panchanan, who had motion sickness and couldn’t travel by bus, would drive the family over in his rickshaw-van, even if it meant pedalling 50-60 km.
However, an athlete needs more than a fistful of rice to keep going. In interviews, Swapna has spoken of how it was only after joining the residential training programme at Kolkata’s Sports Authority of India (SAI) in 2012 that she got a consistent and appropriate diet. Before that, it was a constant struggle. Das and other members of RPSA would pool in resources to get her special food. “Someone would donate eggs, someone fruits,” said one member. “Now that those days are over, it’s better not to talk of them.”
Swapna’s family is in no mood to dwell on the past either, as they immerse themselves in the upcoming festivities. “Bygones are bygones,” says Swapna’s sister Chandana, offering me rasogollas from a new double-door fridge in the verandah. Chandana used to play football once, was even a district champion, but she gave up playing and got married after Class XI, and is now a mother of two. “For poor families like ours, sports is not easy. Swapna was exceptional. So, the family pooled in all its resources to support her.” Chandana is at her baaper bari (father’s home) to meet Swapna, who is coming home after almost a year, and for the first time after the Games.
Medal power
Since Swapna’s Asiad gold, there has been a steady stream of visitors to the modest Barman house. About 16 families, all branched out from the Barman family tree, make up the neighbourhood, which is surrounded by lush green paddy fields this time of the year. As landless share-croppers, it is they who’ve cultivated the fields.
“We’ve never seen so many people here,” says Swapna’s aunt Nani, who has come over to check up on the ‘champion’s house’. People-watching has become her new pastime. “When the champion was here, there were hundreds and thousands of people. We accommodated relatives from far-off places in all the houses in the neighbourhood.”
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In 2006, when members of RPSA first visited Swapna’s home, it was a thatched house lit by a wicker lamp. Today, there’s a brick-walled house with tin roof and electricity connection, testimony to Swapna’s success.
The house was built last year with funds from government schemes. “The first thing we built was the mandir (an altar to Kali, the family’s guardian deity),” Basana says with pride.
The day Swapna won the medal, it had rained a lot. “ Kaada , kaada ,” exclaimed Chandana, describing the muddy puddles all around. Even this muddy detail is now a thing of the past. A day after the medal announcement, the district administration laid a concrete road and courtyard for Swapna’s home.
As the first Asiad gold medallist from north Bengal, Swapna is greeted by huge crowds everywhere, and it is sundown by the time she reaches home, barely 50 km away. As an athlete with 12 toes, victory was never easy for her. Today, Nike has offered to make her customised shoes that will be sponsored by the Chennai-based Integral Coach Factory.
I reach Siliguri soon after Swapna’s flight lands. On her way home, she stops to talk to the press at Siliguri Journalists’ Club. Sports was an escape from poverty, she says. “I took it up because I desperately needed a job.” She had not heard of the Asian Games or any others. “But as I succeeded, and as I practised at SAI, my targets changed. Now I want to win,” she says, her eyes set on the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
Swapna’s responses are matter-of-fact, unsentimental. She avoids harping on the past, but when asked about her ₹10 lakh cash prize, she says, “I am from a poor family. For me, ₹10 lakh is a lot. For someone who did not have ₹10 once, ₹10 lakh is a lot.”
The Siliguri-based independent journalist writes on politics, culture and other things (after the kids go to sleep).
