THE Bhiwani Boxing Club is just that, two rooms and a shed. A peepul tree and a Shiva idol stand to the left outside the gate, a sagging volleyball netting graces the right flank. The blue iron gate is never locked and opens out to a small brick path lined with wild rose, hibiscus and other flower shrubs. There is one room with a bed and a television, one tiny toilet and a tinier storeroom for gloves and other equipment.

Five punching bags hang next to the room, a huge mirror frames one wall, there is a basic weight-training machine on one side, and a new ring on the other. It’s 5 p.m. and young boxers start to congregate. Training begins at 5:30 p.m., six days a week. It’s a day before Jitender and Vijender are to get into the ring for their quarters matches and journalists have suddenly found that all roads lead to the BBC.

Singh has made the 50-odd kids queue up but it’s certain that training will be disturbed today. Still, the boxers have to focus on the practice. “It’s been raining, On a normal day we usually get around 120 kids,” says Singh, once he has set the kids to task. But in a town that was curiously unfamiliar with even the existence of the place some hours ago, where do all these kids come from?

“Mostly from villages around this place. We get a few from the town too. Now they have started showing interest, but it’s mostly village kids,” says Singh. “You need to be hungry,” he goes on, “you need to want it really bad and the deprivation that most village kids feel spurs them on. You know, for every human being, the wish to be the strongest is the most raw, but innate. We just tap that. To be honest, the first appeal was jobs. They realised that national level success would make getting a job easier, and that was big bait.”

... contd.