Six years ago when Nagarjuna Veerbhadrappa, now 13, first appeared at the entrance of the Karnataka Taekwondo Academy Training Hall at the Kanteerva Indoor Stadium one evening, he was asking if anyone could buy him a meal.
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.
Over the past six years, the training hall has been his home on many nights and taekwondo has virtually become an extension of his life. At the fifth national open taekwondo event held in Bangalore between June 19 and June 27 this year, Nagarjuna won two gold medals and a silver to add to his consistent gold medal performances in the state championships since 2004.
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 only incentives to go to school.
Nagarjuna’s coaches have since shifted him to an English-medium private school. This year he entered the ninth standard and grappling with English is one of Nagarjuna’s biggest concerns now. His awards have partly paved the way for his education, while others like a senior income tax official have pitched in for his subsistence. “Because of his taekwondo exploits we did not have to pay a donation to get him into his new school,” says his coach Muthappa.
“I want to be an engineer, but I also want to be an international, Olympic-level taekwondo champion,” says Nagarjuna.
According to his coaches, he has dedication and is almost a natural when it comes to his ability to adapt to any sport.
“He wakes up every morning at 5.30, prepares the training hall for the first classes and participates in the training. Often senior taekwondo exponents consult him. But we have a concern over his height. He still remains a tiny person,” says Muthappa, a virtual father figure to the boy, who takes him to his own home during vacations.
Nagarjuna’s story, however, is at a tangent to the growing neglect of taekwondo in Karnataka by official bodies vested with the responsibility of nurturing the sport.
At the just concluded national meet for instance, hundreds of winners among the nearly 3,000 participants from states like Maharashtra and Punjab returned home empty-handed.
While a medal-distribution function was held at the end of the meet — a few medals were distributed during the presence of the chief guest, minister Goolihatti Shekhar — others were told that they would not get medals since not all participants had paid their full registration fees, a former taekwondo representative for the country said.
There were also complaints of the Karnataka Taekwondo Association accommodating participants in wedding halls, not issuing proper receipts for registration fees and haphazardness in general.
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