Homeless, abused and hungry, 13-yr-old now a national taekwondo champion

One of the coaches, H L Muthappa, an international taekwondo referee, took pity on the kid and sent him off for a meal with a friend who had come for a visit to the training hall.

One night, three months later, the boy was back. “He said he was beaten by his drunk father and thrown out of their pavement dwelling. He said he had nowhere to sleep,” recollects Muthappa.

Emaciated, motherless and constantly on the run from an abusive father, Nagarjuna slept that night for the first time at the gym attached to the taekwondo training hall.

Under the guidance of coaches Muthappa and Rajeshwar Meitei, who took him under their personal wings, the 13-year-old is today a second dan black belt and one of the best in his weight category across the country.

He appeared for his first belt examination with the Rs 1,500 prize money he won along with a silver medal at his first national event in Lucknow in 2004. His coaches topped up the remaining Rs 3,500 needed to take the exam.

In the 2005 and 2006 national events at Mumbai and Haryana, he won a silver and bronze respectively, while in 2007, he was pipped to the bronze on a single point.

“Taekwondo is my life. When I first came here I did not even have proper clothes. I could only speak Kannada. Now thanks to my coaches and taekwondo, I have regular meals, I am in an English school,” says Nagarjuna.

His father used to visit him occasionally at the academy until two years ago, but there has been no word about him since then, he says.

When he first appeared at the training hall he was studying in the third standard in a Government school in Bangalore and a mid-day meal was among the...