Two years ago, Akshaylal Chauhan had to stop milk supplies in his household. For a small-town north Indian parent to two young, national-level athletes, it's an unthinkable act. The pandemic was raging and Akshaylal had lost his job of three decades as cook at Meerut's Kailash Prakash Stadium. His sons Neeraj and Sunil - archer and boxer respectively, dropped training and began helping him sell vegetables on a push cart. The family's trials haven't been in vain. Nineteen year-old Neeraj will be competing at the Asian Games six months from now.
Neeraj finished inside the top three at the Asian Games selection trials in Sonepat last weekend. He is part of the national squad and will make his World Cup debut in April, followed by two more of them and the Hangzhou Games in September. This, from fearing for a good part during the lockdown, that he might have to let go of archery.
"I spent the entire lockdown selling vegetables with my father and brother," Neeraj says. "We would be out all day with the cart. Whenever I'd get some time I would train at home with an indoor target. But I wasn't sure if I could return to competitions again. It seemed like a luxury to even think of sport when my family was struggling to afford two meals a day. Dhanush door hota raha (The bow kept getting farther)."
Videos of him and his brother in their jerseys running the cart on roads all day with their father made it to local news channels and later YouTube. Archery Association of India president Arjun Munda requested then union sports minister Kiren Rijiju for help. Both brothers were offered INR 5 lakh assistance each under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports' Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay national welfare scheme a year and a half ago. It brought the family immediate relief and Neeraj his first proper bow.
With his father working at the stadium, sports was a natural choice for Neeraj. He picked up the bow when he was nine years old and his father sometimes took up extra jobs, cooking at weddings and functions to provide for his wife and three sons. "It's a costly sport. Even the bamboo bows cost INR 4000. It was hard for us to afford. After I began winning medals at the junior level, my father didn't want me to give up. He was ready to work any number of hours for that," Neeraj says.
Last year after he turned 18, Neeraj found a job as constable with the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. He has been training at the SAI National Centre of Excellence in Sonepat for the past ten months now. He's getting used to aspects he earlier never knew were part of an elite athlete's life, like sports science and mental training. From bamboo bows being his world, he now competes with a heart rate monitor strapped to his chest. With a hint of a brag, his coach Jitendra Chauhan offers that Neeraj usually keeps a steady rate, hovering in the mid-90s even in crunch match situations. He's also learning to open up about his doubts and fears at group athlete sessions with sports psychologists. "He's a fearless boy, usme ek bhookh hai (he has the hunger) to perform for his family, for himself," says Jitendra.
In March this year, AAI and SAI arranged for 24 Indian junior archers to travel to the World Archery Excellence Center in Lausanne for a fortnight's training. Neeraj was part of that group. "For the first time we had these kids shoot indoor 70m," says AAI high performance director Sanjeeva Singh. "Neeraj shot his personal best score of 340. We had video analysis done and the focus was on refinement of technique. We have been working on Neeraj's bow hand, hook, release and timing. With a deeper hook, better first draw and stronger bow hand, his release and finish have improved. The idea has been to train this bunch to shoot fast. It's not something most archers naturally do but you need it most in windy conditions. Neeraj's strength is he has a quick grasp and is willing to learn. I see him making it to the Olympics in two years."
Earlier this month Neeraj won silver at the Nationals in Jammu, he then went up against senior names he grew up hearing about and watching at the Olympics - Taundeep Rai, Jayanta Talukdar, Pravin Jadhav and Atanu Das, at last weekend's Asian Games trials. He was tense about how he would fare. Little did he know he would make it to the team ahead of two Olympians. "My coach was standing behind me and he could sense I was really nervous. He just told whatever pressure I'm feeling, the seniors are probably feeling it many times more. After that, I just didn't think of anything else. I just kept my eyes on the innermost yellow circle and shot."
Neeraj has the order of preference on his wish-list in ready reckoning. One, every sportsperson's dream, the other involves a famed three-time Olympic medalist American archer. "Olympics khelna hai, Brady Ellison se milna hai" (I want to compete at the Olympics and meet Brady Ellison).