A wushu expert is someone who can mimic a flying dragon, a jumping tiger and a soaring eagle. In the cash-strapped Indian sporting jungle of meagre resources wushu needed all its animal instincts to survive. With surprise being the fundamental aspect of this martial art based on the predatory behaviour of animals, wushu’s sudden poaching on hockey’s prime position caught many off guard. It was an out of the blue realisation that wushu wasn’t just alive but kicking too.

It’s justified to shed a few tears for the national game that slipped down the government’s priority list, but wushu’s graduation happens to the celebration of sports most-famous fable: David beating Goliath. With the sluggish giant — that’s what hockey has turned out to be — biting the dust, it’s time to focus on a young sport that has been perfecting its sling shot attack in virtual obscurity.

Tracing wushu’s long and arduous climb becomes easier if one follows the life and times of the game’s poster Mayanglabam Bimoljit Singh. For both Bimoljit and wushu the struggle was tough and, not surprisingly, their peaks too have coincided. Bimoljit’s bronze medal at the Asian Games in Doha went a long way in changing the priorities of the Sports Ministry.

But many years ago when Bimoljit ran away from home, he never knew that he will have such an impact on the sport that he loved. His reasons for leaving Manipur and moving to Arunachal Pradesh were quite rudimentary. He just wanted to lend a helping hand to his carpenter father, the sole bread-winner of the family of eight in downtown Imphal.

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