There’s a spontaneity about young Archana Kamath that is endearing. It is fear, she says, quoting Vivekananda impromptu, that brings misery, death, and evil.
“And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature.” As a devout student of the Swami’s teachings, this spirit she has embraced fully, Archana says; it is how she plays her table tennis and does much else: with freedom.
The 14-year-old is the reigning National Sub-Junior table tennis champion (the first to emerge from Karnataka since B.M. Ashwini in 1999) and finished 2013 as the state’s top-ranked player in four age-groups (Sub-Junior, Junior, Youth, and Women). Last year, out of the 42 competitions Archana entered across categories, she made the final in 40. And won 32.
“I feel no pressure about delivering results,” she says. “I enjoy playing. I just go and play and come back. I ask my mother if she is happy with my effort. If she says yes, that’s good enough for me.” Against older, taller, stronger opponents (and it must be noted that a girl of 18 holds a massive physical advantage over one of 14) there is no fear whatsoever.
“My approach is that I have nothing to lose. They, on the other hand, don’t want to lose to a small girl.”
For all the abandon that it appears Archana wields the paddle with, she is driven by a fervid devotion to the game. Her day begins by 6 a.m., with fitness work squeezed in before school, and winds down after some five hours of training . Her coach at the Cantonment Rail Club, Bona Thomas John, calls her focus and work ethic “brilliant”.
It is Thursday and he tells a story from this morning, when the evening’s training was brought forward on account of the bandh. “Archana was one of the last to leave and she came up and asked me what time to report in the evening. That’s the kind of girl she is.”
At tournaments, Archana has her mother tape her matches, to be reviewed later. At the China Junior and Cadet Open Table Tennis Championships in Taicang last month, where she finished a creditable ninth in the Cadet singles event, Archana filmed Chinese players she was impressed by. “It’s just so great watching them,” she gushes. “The amount they train, it seems as if they have 48 hours each day.”
The stated absence of pressure from any quarter is due, in no small part, to the atmosphere her ophthalmologist parents – Girish and Anuradha Kamath – have enabled. “It’s only her passion for the game that keeps her going,” says Anuradha, who gave up her practice three years ago to support her daughter’s blossoming table tennis career. “It is she that asks me to take her to practice. She’s making us do what she wants – not the other way round.”
It’s an important distinction. Her school, Poorna Prajna Education Centre (Sadashivanagar), where Archana is a class nine student, has also been hugely supportive, Anuradha says. “We know how much of a difference this makes.”
Archana started playing as a nine-year-old, when her parents installed a table in the basement of their RMV Extension home. She improved in a hurry, winning in just over a year’s time an under-12 state-level tournament.
Her subsequent rise has been nothing short of staggering; it has pleased although not surprised Anuradha. “One thing I can say is that she gives 100 per cent of her attention to anything she does, whether it is academics or table tennis. Sometimes when I watch her at the table, I can’t believe she is a 14-year-old. She’s so focussed.”
The future looks undeniably gilded but there is still a long way to go. “We must not forget,” reminds Bona, “that she’s only 14.”
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Shreedutta Chidananda / Bangalore – August 03rd, 2014