Table Tennis as a profession

 This is the essay that I submitted for the mind map assignment (refer to previous post). A few things might seem unnecessary, but I just wanted to put this up as it was submitted. I've realized, at times, its necessary to state the obvious. :)

Table tennis is a sport in which 2 or 4 players hit a small light ball across a table, with the help of rackets. Though widely played in schools, colleges and game-rooms of corporate companies, it is perhaps one of the most underrated sports in India. Since it is largely looked upon as a means of passing time, it is rarely thought of as a suitable profession. This article explores the commercial viability of being a professional table tennis player.

If you want to pursue table tennis as a profession, the first thing that you would need to do is sharpen your skills and get your techniques right. Practice with friends who play well, and familiarize yourself with the rulebook. The next step would be to join a training camp. If your school has a TT training centre, enroll yourself for starters, before heading towards a professional TT training camp.

  

To test your caliber, you can participate in district and state level tournaments which are held in every state. Table tennis clubs are still a novelty, but you might find one if you’re staying in a metropolitan city. Once you achieve a good rank at the State Level, the State Government Association can pass on your name to the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) for participation in National Level Tournaments. TTFI was one of the founding members of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) and its most important task is to send players to the ITTF Pro Tour international tournaments to represent India.

The most popular international table tennis competitions are ITTF Pro Tour, World Championships, World Cup (also sanctioned by ITTF) and Olympics.  Continental championships like European Championship, Asian Championships are fiercely competitive. Professional table tennis players also play for clubs, apart from their countries. However, in India, there are very few professional clubs as of now.

While considering table tennis as a profession, do remember that till the national level, you have to largely depend on prize money as a means of income. If you’re good, you might get individual sponsorship from companies, but this will need to be your initiative mainly. Mostly, players at national and international level earn a living through table tennis. If you do not make it to the international level, you can apply for a job in the sports quota in government organizations. Another option is to become a coach at a table tennis training camp. However, to have high credibility and earn well, you should have played well at the national level.

Some of the famous Indian players who have represented India internationally are Kamlesh Mehta, Chetan Baboor and Achanta Sharath Kamal . Lack of professional clubs leaves TT players largely at the mercy of prize money, which may be irregular. However, a few people believe that table tennis is slowly gaining popularity in India and in another 5-10 years, India might start having its own professional clubs. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for that!

My first "journalistic" phone call

Being an avid table tennis player (but not a very good one), I thought this would be an interesting topic for an essay using mind maps. Let me rewind a little. During one of our English lectures, our teacher taught us the concept of mind maps. The idea is to draw a visual representation of any topic that you are going to write about, by drawing 6 main arms, representing the 6 main topics ,each of which has 2 arms, representing the sub-topics. The number can vary according to the level of detail and complexity of the topic. Once the mind map is ready, all your information is structured properly and your work is reduced to a large extent when you actually start writing. I must confess, I'm an unstructured writer and till date I preferred it because it's more fun to write in the flow. However, mind maps seem like a handy tool to write structured, logical essays. 

Coming back to the main topic, I chose "Table Tennis as a profession" as the topic for the mind map essay. When I started writing, I realized that I have no idea what to write! Googling didn't yield any results either. Finally, I landed on the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) website. As I browsed through, trying to get some ounce of information, I noticed that names and contact information of a few players (members of TTFI) had been put up. Some of the players were barely above 20. I was in a terrible dilemma for some time, wondering if it's ethical to call up kids and bug them, that too for a school assignment. I felt like I was thoroughly invading their privacy! Plus, I'm the last person to go and speak to strangers. Yeah yeah I know I'm in journalism, I'm getting used to it!

I finally plucked up courage and called up on the first number I came across. A very strict sounding voice on the other hand informed me that his daughter was not available. He asked me to identify myself and my intention for calling his daughter. I had half a mind to hang up on him, but I realized I'm not doing anything wrong. After a few more misses, Abishek agreed to help me out. I felt like a real journalist, calling up strangers and troubling them for my work. I must have spoken to Abishek for almost half an hour. At first he was thoroughly confused about who I am and why I was calling him. Must have seemed really strange for a guy in Chennai to receive a call from Mumbai from a girl claiming to be in some college and asking for information on table tennis. However, he was very sweet and patient and I finally wrote that article. 

I didn't get a spectacular grade for it, mainly because I screwed up the mind map concept. Most probably this was because I'm an unstructured writer by default. However, my teacher seemed really impressed by the information I'd put together and she remarked "good attempt!". The main point is, I had great fun doing the assignment!

After reading this, I'm sure you'd like to know the prospects of table tennis as a profession. Next post, coming up soon! :D

Human Rights and Police Atrocities

At times, unless you're dragged into a debate, you don't really come to know which side you're on. Today in college, during our human rights lecture, Mr. Satish Sahani spoke to us about the other side of police atrocities. The newspapers nowadays are full of brutalities committed by the police in Kashmir. Speaking about crowd control in general, Sahani said that the media always painted the police in a bad light. Legally, the police have a right to give a warning to the crowd to disperse. If this is not followed, then the police are supposed to use every means possible to disperse the crowd and avoid riots or any other dangerous situation. 

I asked him if it's admissible for police to fire at stone-pelters. He disagreed completely and also informed us that sometimes rubber/plastic pellets can cause worse damage than a real bullet (depending on where it is fired of course). He seemed to be of the general view that police are always shown in a bad light when they have to control crowds. His  main point was, custodial violence is not permissible. To elaborate, torture/murder or any other form of harassment of criminals once they are in police custody is a clear violation of human rights. By the same extension, "planned" or staged encounters also violate the human rights of the victims. According to Sahani, an encounter is an admission of failure by the police to gather evidence against the accused. 

He also spoke about how police should not be deployed to handle Maoists. Policemen believe that their uniform and command is enough to make people listen to them. However, Maoists and other terrorists have openly declared that they will not follow the law. Specially trained forces are required to tackle terrorists and Maoists. 

Another interesting aspect that was discussed during class was, why are policemen perpetually rude to us? According to Sahani, no government officer in our country believes that it is his duty to serve the public. The primary reason for this is, they are not accountable to the public. The best solution according to him was, to hold the electorate responsible for the ill-behavior of all government employees. The citizens should let the government and opposition know that this is an issue which needs to be tackled immediately or else they'll face the music during elections. An interesting course of action, no doubt, but I wonder, will it really work? Perhaps a law is required which will make all government officials more accountable to the public.

At the end of this lecture, I realized that I care. I care deeply about apathy of the police when any citizen tries to file an FIR. Or when police blame a rape victim saying "she asked for it". Sahani said that as citizens, we should stop fearing the police. As citizens, we can't just wait for government officials to change. We need to become the change.

Ranting and raving..

Nowadays, whenever faced with a difficult situation, I laugh. Not the forced-nervous Dr. J Asthana kind of laughter. Real bubbling laughter. Noisy aunty elbowing me out of the way to get into the local, I laugh. Students cutting across the line to get food before me, I laugh. I've genuinely started laughing in circumstances that would otherwise make me hopping mad. However, Shivneri just took away my calm. I was ready to burn down the entire Shivneri bus stand, not before stoning down a few buses.

I'd bought the ticket for 6:15 pm asiad. The boarding point was Swargate. Till 7:00 pm, there was no sign of the bus. The officials refused to tell us where it was and when it would come. Finally, we decided to cancel the ticket. It took us fifteen minutes, just to find the person who would give us our complete refund. He had the audacity to go and check whether the bus had really not come. I mean, come on! There should be some compensation for a bus that is an hour late! After filling out some form, he sent us towards the cash counter which was safely tucked away in one corner of that damned big maze called the Asiad bus depo.

It took us about forty five minutes to get our refund. I then booked a ticket for the next day 6:00 am. As usual, the bus came at 6:25 am. At 9:45, the driver asked all the passengers going to Mumbai Central to get down and sit in an ST he had flagged down. Reason? The bus had broken down. Somehow, the bus magically repaired itself and the driver dropped off the remaining passengers at Dadar. I mean, what the f!! Just because they were too lazy to drive the bus beyond Dadar, they shipped off the passengers to another bus! Worse, the bus drove right past where it would have been convenient for me to get down but the driver refused to stop there. They could waste 10 mins shuttling passengers from 1 bus to the other, but couldn't stop 2 mins away from their designated bus stop.

Insensitivity is a word we've all come to associate with government workers. For some reason, I thought Shivneri is more reliable. This incident just proves how wrong I was. I've sworn to myself, I'll never ever travel by Shivneri again. Damned nonsense!

Sanctuary...

First off, apologies for not updating the blog since a long time. I feel like putting up an "under construction" sign. Something like:

"The author of this blog is undergoing a radical change in her thought process and her writing abilities. Any inconvenience caused is regretted." 

Since college has started, not a single day goes by when a new thought doesn't enter my mind. Not even a new thought, a new thought process, a new way of thinking. Either it is planted, or created. I have never been in an environment where my thoughts have been given so much importance. In an engineering college, knowledge is just drilled into you. As opposed to that, in a journalism college, especially in a good one, the aim is to open your mind. Not just in one direction, but in all directions possible. 

From wondering about the role of English in India today, to critiquing a gut wrenching documentary on the Dalai Lama, each day is unique and wonderful and completely unpredictable! It was on one such day that Bittu Sahgal came to our college to give us a lecture on "Save the Tiger". He is the editor of the Sanctuary magazine and has worked on Tiger projects in India. I am ashamed to admit that when he came in, I didn't know who he was. Post lecture, I spoke to my friends and they told me all about him. In a way, it helped me look at him and his message (and the delivery of the message) in a very objective manner. At the risk of sounding pompous, there are ways to improve his lectures on the subject. 

The gist of the matter was, we not only need to save the tiger, but also our ecology. Mainly, our forests, or else the whole water balance would get disturbed and the consequences so on and so forth. We were all so moved at the end of it, that we were desperately asking "What can we do to stop this!" And he said, just do your bit, don't waste water, don't waste paper and most importantly, as journalists, spread the message! So that's what I'm doing when I strongly suggest you visit the sanctuary website. Not because you are an environmentalist, or because you care about global warming. Simply because "global warming will not affect the 'earth'. The earth will exist long after we've gone. It's humanity that needs to be protected against global warming, You and me.. "

Bharat Bandh

Performing an appropriate chance pe dance, I left for Pune the moment I came to know that there is a possibility that Monday will be a holiday. Promptly ignoring the reason for the holiday, namely the Bharat Bandh, I built wonderful castles in the air about eating out, watching I hate luv storys etc. Needless to say, dil ke armaan aasuo mein beh gaye. While I simply made plans to catch up with friends and relatives, I started wondering about this so called for-the-common-man-movement. 

A poll on some crappy (but I presume reliable) news channel showed that 40% viewers believed that the bandh was for their good, whereas 60% felt that it had no bearing on their lives. The papers are full of rising inflation and rising prices of essential commodities. Everyday a question is posed to the government about their inaction regarding this burden on the common man. The opposition has run from pillar to post, ensuring that the people get to know about inflation and the supposedly indifferent government. From moving cut motions against price rise of fuel, to the latest bandh, from the look of it, we seem to have a very reliable opposition working in our interest. However, is moving a cut motion the right method to agitate against price rise? Don't even get me started on the bandh..

Obviously, I'm most upset because I didn't get to watch I hate luv storys. Apart from that though, the bandh brought normal life to a complete standstill. Though the government took efforts to ensure that it didn't, it pretty much did. Thank God, hospitals were working properly. When such incidents occur, you usually find the common man cowering at home, and mawalis ready to pounce out on the streets, destroy public property and slap people around. The whole atmosphere is tense, tv channels keep showing damage and destruction in a repeated loop, further forcing us to get scared and sit at home. The loss to the public coffers due to bandh on trade should be considered an insult to us as now there is less money to perform work for the good of the public. So, what was the point of all this? Apart from political mileage, save little. 

As a solution, I hope the day comes when any goonda mawali thinks 10 times before destroying public property. An intelligent opposition has twin tasks. One is to challenge the government when it gets too sure of itself. The other is to engage the government in dialogue to skillfully solve any crisis. It's never enough to just do one of the two. For political gain, the opposition can ensure that  the media  gives it due credit for good suggestions for improvement of the situation. I believe this would be a win-win situation for all...

Limitless creativity...

I love the process of deconstructing an unnatural phenomenon. The wonder that I feel, just before discovering the truth, gives me a real high. For instance, while traveling, I've often noticed that a few homes and buildings appear as if they have no entry roads leading up to them. Now I know, its impossible that such a building would exist, but when I was younger, my imagination would run wild at the thought of living in such a house or building. Do the owners magically teleport into their homes? Do they leave their cars on the main road and always go walking in? More than anything else, the very idea of a home with no visible road leading up to it fascinated me, since it is such an outlandish idea.

When my friend was younger, he used to get scared looking into puddles during daytime. He could see the sky reflected in them, and assumed that the puddle was that deep! When I was young, if I ate a lot of chicken, my parents would say, "tomorrow  morning, kukuchakoo noises will come out of your stomach" and I used to actually believe that. When we see magic performed by a magician, till the trick is revealed to us, either by our own brain or by the magician, we believe it to be true. The point before the truth is revealed, the mind is free to explore so many possibilities! Such creativity can be employed to explain even a seemingly simple incident or object. It amazes me, the kind of constructive and destructive distraction our own minds can provide us...