My childhood friend, a hero

By Shevlin Sebastian

Pics: Pushpita Singh at Wimbledon; Anup Singh with his wife Madhu at a tennis tournament in Florida

On Facebook, some weeks ago, Pushpita Singh, the sister of my childhood friend Anup Singh Rashtrawar, posted a four-year-old memory of her maiden trip to the courts of the Wimbledon tennis championship. As I stared at the photos of the pristine grassy courts, it triggered a memory within me. Of me standing at the courtside of the Calcutta Gymkhana Club to watch my friend Anup swing a racket. There was a huge tree near the court, which provided plenty of shade on hot summer mornings.

Anup and I were neighbours. We were a study in contrasts: he was 6’, I was 5’4”. He was muscular; I was frail. He is a Rajput and I am a Malayali. I have no idea how we connected, but we did.

His dad introduced him to tennis. He became passionate about it and trained diligently. Whenever Anup would have a match, he would take me along, to provide moral support. So I would stand on many courts in and around Kolkata. He was a good player: booming serves, a powerful forehand and a smooth backhand, too. The only problem was Anup’s mind. No matter how well he played, he tended to lose, after two or three rounds. Once, after a match, he told me, “Damn, I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.”

That summed up Anup’s professional career.

But despite his defeats, Anup was a hero to me. This is what happened: just opposite the club, on Suhrawardy Avenue, there is a slum. Eager boys would stand on the pavement and peer through the railings at the games being played.

One boy would be there, day after day. Anup noticed him. One day, he called him inside. And Poonam expressed his desire to play. By this time, Anup had begun coaching too. So, after the trainees had left, he would call Poonam in and exchange shots with him.

Anup was impressed by the boy’s talent. And desire. He hired him as a ball boy. Soon, Poonam began to get better. He took part in junior tournaments and won a few. Then he moved to the seniors. Again he won a bit. He had grown taller, fitter and stronger. Later,

Poonam got a job in the Railways. He played for them, and later, became a coach. Today, he lives a comfortable life, having got steady promotions in the Railways, bought a flat, and now his children study in English medium schools.

Anup did the same for about fifteen Muslim slum boys. All of them started as ball boys. One youngster was the son of the maid who worked in his house. In later years, Shafiq did so well, as a coach, that his mother could stop working and live comfortably.

Indeed, many of them became coaches and earned a decent living from the sport. And it all began when Anup beckoned a bedraggled youngster to come into the club.

As for Anup, his life changed when another childhood friend sponsored him to come to America. Eventually, he became a tennis coach in America. Today, he works in a millionaires’ club in Florida and stays in a gated community with a Mercedes Benz in his garage.

And throughout these years his giving continued. Once when he was browsing online, he came across a story in an Indian newspaper of a poor Muslim girl in Madhya Pradesh who wanted to study medicine but did not have the money. She had nothing to worry about. Because Anup contacted her, by getting the number from the reporter and is now funding her education. And there are many stories like this. The Silent Samaritan.

But the one big puzzle for me was this: Anup never taught me tennis. And I also never asked him to teach me. When I told him this, years later, when he came to visit me in Kochi, where I earned a living as a journalist, he had a baffled look on his face and said, “Gosh, it’s a mystery.”

True, but I don't mind.

I have gained so much from this friendship.