How I came to love hockey

One part of the house where Muniswamy Rajgopal, a hockey stalwart of repute lived, was a trove of trophies and medals of all shapes and sizes, and the sheer number of awards and plaques displayed on a shelf made us wonder whether it was a souvenir store. Curious kids like us who had befriended his son, R Sridhar, would steal a glance at the memorabilia while keeping our distance.

Rajgopal, a diminutive individual in his 50s with salt and pepper strands of hair, rarely spoke to us, though his son and nephews were our playmates. The walls of the home also had photo frames depicting him as a hockey player, but we never saw the bigger picture. The open space in front of the house, paved with granite, was our hunting ground, and it was here that we put the stick to the ball in a two-a-side game and honed our hockey skills.

The few times that Rajgopal decided to lock horns with us, it would turn out to be a terribly one-sided contest. His dribbling skills were par excellence as he weaved mesmerising patterns around us. It was at an exhibition game between two veteran sides at the Bengaluru East Ground in Fraser Town that we got a real taste of his mind-boggling artistry. He effortlessly sneaked past the defence, dodged the rival goalkeeper and banged in the winner, sending the crowd into raptures.

The hard yards that we put in during those formative years would prove productive in later years. My brother and Sridhar went on to don the state colours in the Junior Nationals Hockey in later years. Murali, Sridhar's oldest cousin, and I enjoyed a long stint with the game in our organisations, BEML and SBI respectively. Hockey gave us a sense of identity, enabled us to go places and bump into people from all walks of life. It also implanted in us a spirit of sportsmanship and discipline.

But who was Muniswamy Rajgopal? He was none other than Karnataka's first Olympic gold medal winner (1952 Helsinki Games). Renowned for his prodigious stickwork, he earned the sobriquet of the 'Artful Dodger'. He made his mark under the iconic Dhyan Chand when an unpartitioned Indian team toured East Africa in 1945. He was also instrumental in the Bengaluru based Hindustan Aircraft (now H AL) emerging triumphant in the 1951 Beighton Cup--deemed to be the oldest hockey tournament in the world--in Kolkata. He passed on in 2004, but his name would remain etched in the annals of Karnataka's glorious sports history!