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MUMBAI: Making sports authorities take him seriously is a martial art that former taekwondo player Jaspreet Singh has been trying to master for five years. “Are you really the secretary?” officials often ask 27-year-old Singh, a lithe Bathinda lad who doesn’t fit the grey-hairedpaunchy-Nehru-jacket-clad mould of India’s sporting federation heads. Besides, the perception of Punjab’s youth as drug-addled seekers of Canadian passports doesn’t help Singh who must make presentations and juggle glasses to establish his legitimacy as founder of Para Boccia Sports Welfare Society, India’s governing body for boccia–the only Paralympic sport other than goalball that has no Olympic equivalent.
By now, Singh is used to the charade of using paperweights and glasses as stand-ins for the red, blue and white or “jack” leather balls of boccia while introducing the precision sport to netas, athletes and other Indians who almost always mispronounce ‘boccia’. A cousin of the French game of boules, boccia–one of the oldest sports with roots dating back to ancient Greece–is designed for athletes with cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy and other neurological conditions. Players in wheelchairs use hands, feet or assistive devices such as ramps to deliver the leather balls which are filled with plastic granules. Among its flamboyant stars is red-and-bluemohawk-sporting David Smith of Britain who recently won a gold at the Tokyo Paralympics after beating Malaysia’s golden-haired 26-year-old Chew Wei Lun aka ‘Silent Killer’, who took home his country’s first boccia silver.
The missed opportunity here is obvious to Singh. “There are 22 sports in the Paralympics but Indian players only represent the country in nine,” says Singh who chanced upon boccia at the Taek Wondo Regional Championship in Seoul in 2014. Intrigued, he tumbled down a digital rabbit hole that soon led him to apply to London’s Boccia International Sports federation for official recognition. That’s how Boccia’s governing body in India came to be headquartered in Punjab in 2016. So far, it has held five national tournaments in various states and star player Rahul Dumpa of Visakhapatnam has even represented India at 2018’s Asian Para Games in Jakarta. Lack of sponsors though, means that Dumpa must fill a tennis ball with sand and use cardboard sheets as makeshift ramps during practice.
“The international-quality leather balls and ramp cost over Rs 3 lakh,” says Dumpa, a former Navy man who is still paying off the medical bills worth Rs 7 lakh that ensued after both his mother and grandmother tested positive for Covid last year. Dumpa earns Rs 40,000 a month by selling diamonds for an international firm over the phone–a nocturnal job that came to him after an accident during Holi of 2017 rendered him quadruplegic. Boccia entered his life months later, after the love of his life married someone else.
“A friend told me about the game being played in a church nearby. I took it up as time pass,” says Dumpa, who enjoyed the sport that reminded him of “gotiyan” (marbles), garnered national gold medals and found himself flying nervously to the Asian Para Games in Indonesia. “Able-bodied and para athletes work all their lives to qualify for international events. And here I was, a wheelchair-bound man sitting next to bigwigs such as Deepa Malik, the first Indian woman to win a medal in Paralympic Games,” recalls Dumpa, who also felt dwarfed by players such as a seven-time goldmedallist from Korea. “He told me he had been playing the game for 15 years,” says Dumpa.
On the surface, boccia sounds simple. Throw one or more of six coloured balls closer to a white target ball than your opponent. “It’s not easy. It’s like chess,” says Chandigarh’s 25-year-old MBA student Nivran Pama, who was stunned by the technical precision of Australian players at a Dubai contest in 2019. Besides the futility of training with “jugaadu equipment”, the event taught Pama–who spent Rs 2 lakh to fly down to the event along with her mother–about the need for government funding. “Many players need attendants to help them during the game. Bearing their expenses along with existing medical expenses, is not feasible,” says Pama.
Which is why Mumbai’s Joseph Roderaz considers himself lucky to be working with an airline that bore the travel expenses for him and his crew of three: his nephew, his neighbour and his helper. Meanwhile, Dumpa–who is trying to reach out to authorities in Andhra Pradesh–concedes he has had more luck selling diamonds.
By now, Singh is used to the charade of using paperweights and glasses as stand-ins for the red, blue and white or “jack” leather balls of boccia while introducing the precision sport to netas, athletes and other Indians who almost always mispronounce ‘boccia’. A cousin of the French game of boules, boccia–one of the oldest sports with roots dating back to ancient Greece–is designed for athletes with cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy and other neurological conditions. Players in wheelchairs use hands, feet or assistive devices such as ramps to deliver the leather balls which are filled with plastic granules. Among its flamboyant stars is red-and-bluemohawk-sporting David Smith of Britain who recently won a gold at the Tokyo Paralympics after beating Malaysia’s golden-haired 26-year-old Chew Wei Lun aka ‘Silent Killer’, who took home his country’s first boccia silver.
The missed opportunity here is obvious to Singh. “There are 22 sports in the Paralympics but Indian players only represent the country in nine,” says Singh who chanced upon boccia at the Taek Wondo Regional Championship in Seoul in 2014. Intrigued, he tumbled down a digital rabbit hole that soon led him to apply to London’s Boccia International Sports federation for official recognition. That’s how Boccia’s governing body in India came to be headquartered in Punjab in 2016. So far, it has held five national tournaments in various states and star player Rahul Dumpa of Visakhapatnam has even represented India at 2018’s Asian Para Games in Jakarta. Lack of sponsors though, means that Dumpa must fill a tennis ball with sand and use cardboard sheets as makeshift ramps during practice.
“The international-quality leather balls and ramp cost over Rs 3 lakh,” says Dumpa, a former Navy man who is still paying off the medical bills worth Rs 7 lakh that ensued after both his mother and grandmother tested positive for Covid last year. Dumpa earns Rs 40,000 a month by selling diamonds for an international firm over the phone–a nocturnal job that came to him after an accident during Holi of 2017 rendered him quadruplegic. Boccia entered his life months later, after the love of his life married someone else.
“A friend told me about the game being played in a church nearby. I took it up as time pass,” says Dumpa, who enjoyed the sport that reminded him of “gotiyan” (marbles), garnered national gold medals and found himself flying nervously to the Asian Para Games in Indonesia. “Able-bodied and para athletes work all their lives to qualify for international events. And here I was, a wheelchair-bound man sitting next to bigwigs such as Deepa Malik, the first Indian woman to win a medal in Paralympic Games,” recalls Dumpa, who also felt dwarfed by players such as a seven-time goldmedallist from Korea. “He told me he had been playing the game for 15 years,” says Dumpa.
On the surface, boccia sounds simple. Throw one or more of six coloured balls closer to a white target ball than your opponent. “It’s not easy. It’s like chess,” says Chandigarh’s 25-year-old MBA student Nivran Pama, who was stunned by the technical precision of Australian players at a Dubai contest in 2019. Besides the futility of training with “jugaadu equipment”, the event taught Pama–who spent Rs 2 lakh to fly down to the event along with her mother–about the need for government funding. “Many players need attendants to help them during the game. Bearing their expenses along with existing medical expenses, is not feasible,” says Pama.
Which is why Mumbai’s Joseph Roderaz considers himself lucky to be working with an airline that bore the travel expenses for him and his crew of three: his nephew, his neighbour and his helper. Meanwhile, Dumpa–who is trying to reach out to authorities in Andhra Pradesh–concedes he has had more luck selling diamonds.
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