Vision of Life; by Sanjay: P V Sindhu, Gopichand, Cell Phone & Social Media!

“Social media not only snatches your time, but it also teaches you attention deficiency.”... Neeraj Agnihotri.

Well, I remembered this quote not to slam social media, neither I am of the types who loves bashing social media & Internet & use by themselves the same extensively; I remembered this quote as I came across this wonderful story which has been has been narrated by one of the best sports journalist Boria Majumdar about our Badminton World Champion P V Sindhu & her coach Gopichand & the pains they took to earn Olympic Medal! I have been always fascinated by such stories as these are not some writer's imagination, these are real life stories of the legends& these stories reminds us, no success is a fluke but its outcome of sweat, blood, thousands of hours spent in training, discipline, determination to success & most importantly trust in each other i.e. the player & the coach! The time freeze as it’s a world of two, the coach & the player with one target, the Medal! We often ends up naming some player who are our idols for the poor performance & ignore the efforts they have put in behind those few hours of the game (sometimes even seconds, ask Usen Bolt). Indeed success or failure even after such hardship is part of game but while saying this sentence & accepting failure with smile one must be sure with himself or herself for giving everything one has to achieve the target set!

Of-late we often come across discussions about use of social media & distractions it creates, especially with students as well young players (read as achievers). This story is eye opener for many as it’s not about banning use of social media, it’s about understanding social media's role in our life, as a student or even as achiever when we have already grown up! An addiction is bad may it for a youngster or for a grown up as it distracts you from your goals that's why it’s been called as addiction! Social Media may not disable or damage you physically the way smoking, drinking or the drugs do yet when you have set some target then your challenge is time & it’s this time which gets lost if not health when you get hooked to social media. It’s not bad to be social but it’s definitely not just bad but worst to let others define your identity by their likes & smilies! Like any other medium social media is a boon if used as a tool but then a gun or a sword is also a tool to win the battles, provided in right hands with right head to control those right hands! Today I know even grownups hooked with social media & indeed many of them are successful also in their respective professions yet imagine what they could have done with this time they spent on social media as you can be just alone & do nothing, try it, its wonderful feel! We have forgotten to write (most of us), to paint, to sing, to dance, to admire a birds flight or to admire sunrise & many such small real life things under the tag of “I am busy” but we have enough time to check every single forward & re-forward the same which comes on our smart phone! We don’t admire our kid dancing in-front of us but we react with an emoji to some unknown fools absurd clip on Tik-Tok, we don’t get happy (if at all we realize) if our old mom or dad admiring us for our achievements but we are unhappy for not getting enough likes for our FB post, wow & yet we call ourselves grown-ups & expects our kids to keep off from social media!! And again, if you are using social media to share your creativity then its fine but if you are judging your creativity by others likes then its defeat of your creativity as to post something is ok, to count likes, is you are addicted & any addiction is bad, is my personal opinion! And more than what & why you post on social media is what defines whether you are addicted to social media or not! Someone can use it for commercial purpose, it’s perfectly fine but what a student or a player can commercialize by social media at the cost of the time which could have put in training (read as studying) is something he or she must ask to himself or herself as well the students parents & teachers also should ask this question to the student! And let me share something which my genre too has faced & so has every generation, there may not be social media when I was a kid but then social fear factor was always there, like a trip is going to some place & most students are going, I knew my parents can’t afford it, so just by not going to the trip isn’t going to make me anti-social, is what I knew then also! Same is with play time, when I had exams (due to my engg studies erratic schedules) always when most boys from other fields had free time it was my study time & I too have this feeling of getting tagged as anti-social as I used to be forced to sit at home & study while entire colony’s kids were on play-ground! Well, I had my fights with my parents on this & I am sure thousands of others boys & girls must have had their own fights over this social aspect of student life! Every time when some kid has been refrained by the parents or teachers (read as coach) there has been friction & at that time you think your coach is the worst human being on the earth & most of such kids when grow up & look back, has thanked their coach for behaving the way in which they have behaved!

Today when I look back, I too laugh at my foolish concepts of being social & well I must admit today also I am a student when it’s being social! Today nobody can tell me do this or do that, I have access to unlimited internet data & allowed to be member of any social platform (thanks to the fifty years I have put behind) yet I ask to myself every time, what I really need in life, some likes on a B or Twitter on my post or some time for myself to set a new target in the form of a new challenge! I think till the time this question haunts me, I am ok to use the social media but the day I will be without any target or any challenge; that will be end of me as an individual mind, well social media has found another victim that day! And to set new targets, new challenges doesn't mean loss of peace of happiness, it’s just a sign that you are giving justice to your aliveness which you can do happily also, isn’t it?...

And then everything has its right timing as to my knowledge even today PV Sindhu is one of the most active personality on Insta & Twitter & inspires millions of kids by her posts but only when she is not having any tournament ahead, this is what Gopichand was successful to make her understood & she is successful to handle the tool named social media! Here is that story…

PV Sindhu had just lost a hard-fought first round match at the Australian Open (2015) against former world No. 1 and London Olympics silver medalist Yihan Wang. But coach Pullela Gopichand wasn’t flustered.

Rather, with her sister Divya in Australia, Sindhu spent the next few days partying.

Gopi in fact temporarily removed all restrictions on food and late nights.

Those were the last few days of enjoyment. Soon after returning to India, Gopi handed Sindhu a letter.

It was the first in their long association and listed the ‘dos and don’ts’ for the next eight months. Among them was a clause that a 20-year-old youngster would have to surrender her phone. Talent, he argued, needed to be honed to win an Olympic medal and he was determined to leave nothing to chance.

“Yes, I was a little worried about the phone because among all my students she is the fastest to respond to a phone message. But it was a distraction we could do without,” Gopi says while l ..
while looking back at the period that eventually made the legend of PV Sindhu.

“I didn’t think he meant it seriously. Definitely not about the phone .. How could I not have a phone! And yet when he gave me the letter, I instinctively said yes. So when I looked back in the evening there was nothing much I could do because I had already agreed to the conditions,” Sindhu laughs.

Gopi was leaving nothing to chance. He had a full programme in place not only for Sindhu but every bit for himself as well. “In our house it’s always Vishnu (son) and Gayatri (daughter) who decide on the food. I really don’t mind. But not so then. For those few months, it was about me, and me only. I wanted food of my choice because I was afraid of falling sick and missing training. It would mean Sindhu missing training and such things weren’t permissible,” Gopi states with a smile.

By the time the duo reached Rio, Sindhu was in top physical shape. But Olympics aren’t only about being in good physical condition.

Pressure, nervousness and control of the mind was key to success. Sindhu, understandably nervous, was playing in her first Olympics and started poorly against Michelle Li (round two) of Canada losing the first game. She did play a good second game but in the third, she was down 1-4 at the start. Her Olympic dream was in the balance and Gopi, yet again, was .. staring at a barren Games. It had eluded him in 2000 when he was in the prime of his career and it was threatening to do so yet again.

For months, Sindhu had been told to play one particular shot. In practice it worked but in match situations, she just wasn’t able to get it going. And now all of a sudden in Rio in what was in Sindhu’s words “the moment it all changed”, the backhand cross court defensive block came out. Balance, poise, positioning — it was a perfect stroke. As perfect as .. one could hit it. Even Gopi was surprised. Something indeed had happened and Li was soon shown the door 21-17 in the third game.

“That’s the stroke we had kept practicing for months ahead of the Olympics. It was one weakness I was determined to overcome and pushed Sindhu to play it for hours and hours. It would take opponents by surprise and if they didn’t attack here knowing she would play the defensive block, I was confident Sindhu would be in control. If you watch the semi-final in Rio Okuhara tried it and bang — Sindhu played the stroke for a winner”, Gopi said with a smile of contentment.

“Gopi sir made me stand in the middle of the seven courts in the academy and screamed at me. He wanted me to shout and be aggressive. I hated it. Hated him and what I was being asked to do. And I started crying but wasn’t able to shout,” smiles Sindhu as she looks back at what all she did with fondness.

But here she was in Rio playing the best she had ever played. Beating the super talented Tai Tzu Ying wasn’t easy and Sindhu did so quite comfortably to set up a quarter-final against Yihan. “On the morning of the match against Yihan, Gopi sir told me I was doing it for India. As we were going into the arena that day he showed me the massive queue of people making their way to the venue and there were Indians who had travelled to Brazil to see me play. It was very different from anything I had

experienced before,” says Sindhu.

“Her warm up wasn’t the best before the quarter-final. Her shoulders were tight and I had to do something to get her going. You don’t beat a former world champion by just turning up and this was the Olympic quarter-final,” says Gopi.

Again, contrary to expectations Sindhu beat Yihan in straight games to make the last four.

While entire country was celebrating, Gopi was starting to coil up. Feel more and more tense. Sindhu wasn’t assured a medal yet and Gopi just didn’t want to end up fourth. “I’ve always been one to soak in pressure. In the final against Carolina for example, I never felt any pressure. Even in the world championship final in Glasgow in August 2017, I was calm. But not on the eve of this semi-final. I didn’t want Sindhu to go through what I had suffered. And continue to suffer. I wanted that medal .. remembers Gopi.

He didn’t sleep a wink that night. Paced the room and kept thinking. He just couldn’t let the medal slip away.

“When I got up in the morning Gopi sir was all ready to go out and train. He had showered and was waiting. I had this feeling he hadn’t slept.

While he never said that to me I could sense he wasn’t his usual self,” recollected Sindhu while smiling at Gopi who by now was starting to look a little sheepish. “And when I won the semi-final I turned to Gopi sir and saw tears rolling down his cheeks. While I was delighted at making the final, to see him cry made me understand the enormity of the achievement.” And for Gopi this was his moment of reckoning.

The pain of Sydney was finally behind him. India had an Olympic finalist for the first time ever and Gopi had finally achieved his dream. “Yes, the job wasn’t done yet. But at one level for me it was done. May be I was wrong because I did feel satisfied. May be if I hadn’t we could’ve planned the final differently. God willing that will also happen,” says Gopi.

“The tears were genuine. Sindhu could now leave the sport a decade later with an Olympic medal. It was hers forever and there was nothing left to chance anymore. All those months of effort had paid off and I was seriously happy,” he adds.

The duo had done all sorts of things in Rio. Constructed a net with towels in their room in the Olympic village and practiced.

Practiced in the morning and again late at night. They had simply given it their all and left nothing to chance as they had set out to do in Hyderabad when Gopi had taken away Sindhu’s phone and stopped her from eating ice cream and biriyani. Gopi was the guru with Sindhu his protégé and the Olympic medal their moksha. You can watch this candid sharing by Sindhu on U Tube link below about restriction on use of Cell Phone…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6F01Cg789A

Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about real estate in Pune at U-Tube link below..

https://youtu.be/al0NZ-7Zhq0

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http://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2018/08/pune-city-no-1.html