The soft-spoken gentleman who offered me tea at his old-world office at the Tata Padukone Badminton Academy was reluctant to talk about his achievements but happily talked about his journey to the top of the pile, in the game. He recounted for me the years spent practicing the game at a small wedding hall in Malleswaram, Bangalore, where he would wait anxiously for the marriage season to end so that he and his cronies could hone their game. Even today he credits his father for his success and for giving him the wings to fly. At a time when middle-class parents hoped for their sons to become doctors or engineers so that they could look after their families, Ramesh Padukone let his son follow his dream of achieving greatness in Badminton, a game which was little known in India and in which a top award was usually a wooden plaque.
The young man did achieve his dream when he won the All England Badminton Championship in 1980, vanquishing one of the game’s most revered figures, Indonesia’s Liem Swie King in straight sets, putting his country on the badminton map of the world. Suddenly, India was a force to reckon with in this sport. The Gentle Giant of the court got a new name, ‘Bangalore Torpedo’, an icon who destroyed the world’s greatest players with a combination of deceptive but deadly wristwork, an uncanny ability to read his opponents, a much-feared ‘Net dribble’, and delicate drop shots. When he could not combat the aggressive physical smashes, he simply decided he would play his opponents on the mind level, bringing them down with strategy rather than physical strength.
India welcomed its sporting hero with the kind of celebration it had never before laid down—fans thronged the fifteen kilometre route from the airport to his house, raining flowers on the shy young lad, who, with this victory, made badminton a sport that was suddenly as popular as cricket or hockey.
What he remembers of those years is his middle-class father’s great generosity in allowing him to pursue a sport that had little money or prospects, his refusal to crib about his circumstances, and the all-encompassing passion for the game that gave him the strength to take on the countless trips made in unreserved compartments of trains, sleeping on the floor, or spending nights on railway platforms so that he could get to his destination and play a good tournament.
When he hung up his boots, retiring after he had given his everything to the game, Padukone set up the eponymous Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy in Bangalore, where he spends his days training the badminton heroes of the future. Along with billiards champion Geet Sethi, he also founded Olympics Gold Quest—a voluntary body that spots and funds India’s best prospective gold medal winners for the Olympic games. ‘It is only when each of us contribute in whatever capacity we can, no matter how small or big the amount, that we can fund our poor but immensely talented athletes. They have the fire in the belly to want to win the ultimate honor for our country but sadly, they don’t have the wherewithal to fund the long journey and tough training that it takes to compete with the world’s best’, he says.
The master badminton players writes a letter to his daughters, film actor Deepika Padukone, and golfer Anisha, making a strong case for keeping their feet on the ground, eyes focused on their goals, and quietly going about their work with single-minded devotion.
Dear Deepika, Anisha,
As you stand on the threshold of life’s journey, I want to share with you some lessons that life has taught me.
Decades ago, as a little boy growing up in Bangalore, I started my tryst with badminton, a game that was completely unknown in our country at the time, except in some parts of West and North India. My father, your grandfather Ramesh Padukone, had become fascinated by the game when he lived in Mumbai and introduced it in Bangalore when he relocated there. He took a group of us, young boys, under his wings to teach us the basics, often looking up rule books so that he could impart to us the finer nuances of the game.
Those days there were no stadiums and courts where sportspeople could train without being disturbed. Our badminton court was the marriage hall of the Canara Union bank, near our house in Malleswaram, and it was there that I learnt everything about the game.
Every day, we would wait to see if there was a function in the hall, and if there was none, we would rush there, after school, to play to our hearts’ content. Marriage season in Bangalore often lasted for five to six months and so there were not too many days we could play at a stretch. Sometimes, it would be just nine to ten days in a month, but we were grateful for even those days.
Looking back, I realize that the most important thing about my childhood and adolescent years was my refusal to complain about my lot in life. I was thankful for the few hours a week we had the opportunity to hit the shuttle back and forth.
In fact, that has possibly been the foundation on which I based my career and my life—the refusal to whinge or whine about anything, even as a child of seven when I first took up the game.
I could have complained about everything—the lack of proper sparring partners, the shortage of practice matches, the unavailability of coaches and fitness trainers, poor infrastructure for training, and so on. But I, in fact a generation of people in the seventies, chose to just accept the conditions that we were presented with and made the best out of them.
And that is what I want to
