They Saw It On TV

Dattu Bhokanal will land at the Mumbai airport in a few hours. The moment they hear this, Dattu’s brother Gokul and ­uncle Balasaheb agree to hitch a 250-km ride from their village in Nashik district with the Outlook team. We won’t make it to Mumbai in time, so we decide to meet midway on the highway late at night. Gokul is in touch with Dattu’s coach Ismail Baig on the phone and we decide to wait for the army vehicle ferrying Dattu and rest of the team from the airport to Army Rowing Node in Pune. The darkness, the lashing rain, cannot hide their anxiety. Finally, we spot the army vehicle. And for ten minutes, the dark, muddy patch on the Mumbai-Pune highway transforms into the setting for a sentimental homecoming, full of smiles and hugs.

This is just a small example of the dedication and love that family and friends have for Dattu the rower, who missed the semi-finals berth at the Rio Olympics only by a whisker, giving his best-ever performance in the men’s singles rowing competition. Although he reached nowhere near the medal this time, he put the sport and his village on the nation’s map—and the distance he rowed from that world is itself worthy of a medal. Dattu’s first question when he learns Outlook visited his village is, “Did you meet my mother? How is she? Did you like my ­village?” He tells us this is only a short break for him, and he will soon be back training and getting ready for the next Olympics. Right now, though, Dattu’s extended family and friends have other things on their mind. They are planning a victory march, a ‘DJ party’ and a kirtan. There will be fire crackers and gulal too.

At Dattu’s village Talegaon Rohi—in Chandwad taluka, 80 km from Nashik and 250 km from Mumbai—his mother Asha, who has temporarily lost her memory since  meeting with a motorbike accident, is bed-ridden in their two-room house on a six-acre family farm—perhaps the only one unaffected by the mood of the moment.

“Nobody has done what he has,” says Gokul, full of awe and admiration for his brother, the champion rower. So that Dattu can be free to pursue his Olympic dream, Gokul plans to continue with farming and be with their mother.

“We don’t think we can really comprehend the full significance of what Dattu has achieved. But one thing I am sure of is he has made rowing known in India,” says his uncle Balasaheb Bhokanal, who has supported him through many ups and downs.

Dattu lost his father in 2011. As the eldest of three brothers and the only one to have cleared SSC, he, like many other youngsters in his village, joined the army as a jawan to support his family with a steady source of income. Maternal uncle Ravindra Wak­chaure helped him adjust in Pune. Even as his world took a 360-degree turn with a new life and new goals, he said he would try out sports when asked for preference in posting. His coach Kudrat Ali identified him as a potential rower by early 2012. Dattu was put through several tests and then his training began. “Apart from physique and reaction, one needs willpower to do well,” says Ali. “Dattu has tremendous dedication and willpower. He started winning within a year-and-a-half of training. While it is common for boys joining the army from underprivileged backgrounds to have no prior exposure to the sports they pick up there, for Dattu, it was more special for two reasons. Stories about his fear of water and never learning swimming in his village even when some other boys did are doing the rounds. Rowing, of course, was out of the question, with no facilities, no money, not even the knowledge that such a sport existed. “It takes three to six months to get over prior fears and anxiety. It is very important to trust the coach and the senior. Dattu could do that,” Ali says.

Hard life in the village only tempered Dattu for future challenges in rowing. “He started helping his father at the early age of 15-16 in drilling wells. We have not seen anyone younger than 24-25 in that line,” his friend Vikram says. Another friend Dattu Matsyadar adds with a chuckle, “When we would sow onion in the fields, he could cover double the area because of his height and the spread of his arms and strength. He would do the job of two.” There is a small debate over whether he is 6 feet 6 inches tall or 6 feet 4 inches. Everyone agrees he is taller than all of them.

“He would finish his work on the fields two hours before the others and then do another shift at a petrol pump,” says uncle Ravindra. He would still manage to run around the village twice a day.”

Soon after Dattu began excelling at the Army Rowing Node and winning medals, he got a new coach, Ismail Baig, who has been training him for international tournaments since 2014. “It was hard to even qualify for rowing,” says Baig. “He has surpassed exp­ectations this year. If he participates in more competitions, that would really help.”

Before Rio, Dattu visited Florida in the US for a competition and some training. It wasn’t easy, though, for the soft-­spoken newcomer. “Money is a problem,” admits uncle Balasaheb. “I wish we had this kind of media attention before he left for the Olympics. We barely managed to get Rs 5 lakh from the government and that’s not enough if you want to practise properly without worrying about money.”

Balasaheb, who would deposit money for Dattu every now and then, says the family would do anything to see him through his dream for a medal. Dattu had refused to marry until the Olympic Games were over. “He wants both his younger brothers to marry first as his eyes are fixed on the medal,” says the uncle.

Even as pictures and videos are exc­hanged and replayed on WhatsApp—their only window to what lies outside of the corn and onion fields—his grandmother tries in vain to get his frail mother to sit up and talk. “After the accident, she was being treated in Pune for a few months and then we brought her back,” says the grandmother. “She is lost most of the time. I have seen how she managed after her husband’s death, like a sparrow that takes her babies under her wings. Hope she gets better and feels happy to see how well Dattu is doing.”

The mood lifts quickly as someone asks the grandmother about the race she saw on TV. “I saw, I saw,” she says. Soon everyone is talking of how Dattu’s grandfather was cheering him loudly to “hit harder, hit harder”, as if the darling of Bhokanals could hear him in Rio. To the old man, telling TV-real from the ‘really real’ meant nothing as long as ­Dattu kept rowing hard for that medal.

By Prachi Pinglay-Plumber in Nashik