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Sudeep Pakrashi follows the ups and downs of ace archer Dola Banerjee’s journey to the OlympicS

BASAK Bagan has its historic importance, but it isn’t quite Behala. Not yet, at least. The modest north Kolkata locality, with its labyrinth of bylanes that once housed revolutionary thinkers like Ramakrishna Paramhans and Swami Vivekanand, is the present day home of champion archer Dola Banerjee. Beijing can change things for this nondescript area and its Olympic-bound resident. This August, Dola has a chance to elevate herself to the cult status that Kolkata’s other sporting stalwart, and Behala boy, Sourav Ganguly, enjoys.
Interestingly, Dola, sitting at her simple home, starts the conversation by speaking about the flip-side of stardom. After getting a first-hand experience of the fickleness of fame, she is a bit sceptical of the spotlight. The World Cup win towards the end of 2007 had meant a Beijing berth was a formality. It didn’t turn out to be so. A sudden slump saw her world ranking drop from 6th to 15th. A tragic possibility loomed large: the World Cup winner might end up sitting at home and watching the Olympics on television.
Like a true champion, Dola battled form and criticism to earn a ticket to Beijing after a commendable show in the trials in Kolkata last week. Relieved after surviving the slump, the 28-year-old archer speaks of the days when she thought that Beijing was too far since there were too many distractions around.
“In the run-up to the Olympic trials, my training was hampered by several felicitation functions and public appearances. After the World Cup win, I was busy doing all this for almost a month and a half. So, it was not unexpected that I struggled to maintain my form,” Dola says.

Stuck in reverse
ACTUALLY, it was a Catch-22 situation for Dola as she dealt with the World Cup win hype. For a sport desperately needing recognition and perpetually suffering cash crunch, stage appearances to collect prize money cheques are as important as spending time on the field. Despite sacrificing training sessions for felicitation functions, where she collected about Rs 15 lakhs, Dola isn’t quite self-sufficient in this surprisingly expensive sport. Ahead of her second Olympic appearance, she still hasn’t found any sustained long-term corporate assistance. The Korean bow that she uses costs about Rs 1 lakh. The American arrows have a price tag of Rs 1,600 each.
“After winning the World Cup, I had hoped that my sponsorship problems would finally be solved. I got to know that some corporate houses were showing interest in me. But till now, I haven’t received any concrete proposal for sponsorship,” she laments.
Still, the lack of sponsorship is a mild niggle. Instead, she is focused on a good show at Beijing. “The new format at the selection trials was tough for all of us. We had to hit 70 meters, 16 times. But the event at the Olympics will be on the old format, where one has to hit 70m twice in the qualifiers. I feel if I can maintain a score of around 330-plus, which I was scoring last November, I will get good results. More importantly, if I give my country a lead in the opening match of the team championship, you never know, we might bag a medal,” she says re-listing herself among India’s ‘few good men/women’ in Beijing.

Different chords
BUT the Dola of today is a far cry from the nine-year-old reluctant archer, whose vocal chords had shown more promise than the hand-eye coordination. “I cannot say whether I really had interest in the sport then. I was pretty young when I went to the Baranagar Archery Club for the first time. I was sent with all other children of my locality. It was nothing more than an evening outing,” recalls Dola.
“It was, to tell you the truth, monotonous just watching the other archers at the BAC, as we were not allowed to use arrows and the bow then. Instead, I preferred practicing music, which I found more fascinating,” she said.
Dola used to seriously pursue Indian classical music since that was the cue she got from mother Kalpana. During those early days, there was every possibility of her leaning towards a career in singing. But despite hailing from a family of singers, she finally made the decision of taking up the bow and arrow. One of her cousins pursued music and today the world knows him as Shaan — the famous Bollywood playback singer. “Shaan was born in Mumbai and stayed there. Despite being such a big name in the popular music industry, he is still quite unassuming,” says Dola of the other famous member of this family of diverse talents.

Long way round
SUCCESS came quite early for Dola. She first proved her mettle in the sub-junior national championships in 1995 and was selected for the senior Indian squad. Such has been her consistency that she has never missed making the national squad since then.
For Dola, like many other archers of her generation, Limba Ram happens to be the role model. “He is the icon in Indian archery. He was the man who steered the sport to a new height for India against the world’s leading countries. I had the privilege of seeing him up-close at a few preparatory camps and tournaments. He had a unique stance, and all the juniors used to learn a lot from him at the camps.”
An employee of Eastern Railway, Dola had begun training at Kolkata’s SAI complex under Korean coach Lee Wang Woo. She says that the Tata Archery Academy in Jamshedpur had a big role to play in her journey from Baranagar to Beijing. “I was at the academy for eight years. I can never forget the help I got from there. Even these days, whenever I wish to train there, the TAA welcomes me,” she says.

At crossroads
Wiser after the long rollercoaster ride, Dola isn’t keen to talk about the future. “I am not in a position to think about that yet. Why should I? The archer who bagged the silver at the Athens Olympics in 2004 was 52 years old then. Age cannot be the decisive factor. You think about quitting only when you realise you’re not performing up to your satisfaction,” she says.
Quitting might not be on the horizon yet, but Dola happens to be at crossroads right now. Results at Beijing can change a lot of things for her and the sport, which has shrunk into the background after the brief high during Limba Ram’s days. In the land of dramatically skillful male archers of mythological proportions, a lot depends on the arrows a young girl will fire in the coming months. A bull’s eye for Dola can change a lot. Archery might finally find a face to market itself, Dola may just find deep-pocketed backers and Basak Bagan become the new Behala.

editor@expressindia.com

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