The Race of My Life, page 1
The Race of My Life
Born in 1932 in undivided India, Milkha Singh is arguably one of India’s most iconic male athletes. All through his professional career, his mantra for success has been regular practice, hard work, self-discipline, dedication and the determination to perform to the best of his abilities. Although he stopped participating in competitive events in the early 1960s, he has dedicated his life to sports.
Milkha Singh has always been a romantic at heart, and he is today a contented husband, a proud father and an indulgent grandfather. The Farhan Akhtar starrer—Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is a biographical film that depicts his early life and career.
Published by
Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2013
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Copyright © Milkha Singh 2013
Introduction Copyright © Jeev Milkha Singh 2013
Foreword Copyright © Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra 2013
While every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of the photographs and obtain permission, this has not been possible in all cases; any omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in future editions.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.
Mita de apni hasti ko agar koi martaba chahe,
ki dana khak may mil kar gul-e-gulzar hota hai
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Prologue
1 Life in Undivided India
2 Bhaag Milkha, Bhaag
3 Ten Days in Jail
4 My Army Life
5 This was Not Sports
6 From the Bhangra to the Foxtrot
7 My God, My Religion, My Beloved
8 Going for Gold
9 Meeting Pandit Nehru
10 ‘Come on, Singh’
11 The Flying Sikh
12 Going West
13 So Near, and Yet So Far
14 From Sports to Administration
15 Nimmi
16 The Bird and a Melancholic Tree
17 The Jewels in my Crown
18 I Have a Dream
19 Once an Athlete, Always an Athlete
20 The Politics of Sports
Epilogue
Foreword
The past four years have been the most exciting, traumatic and enlightening years of my life, as it was during this period that the idea of making a movie on Milkha Singh, the iconic athlete, was born, bred and executed.
For some the name ‘Milkha Singh’ evokes a faint memory from the pages of history. However, what most people will remember is that Milkha Singh, hailed as the Flying Sikh, was the famous 400-metre champion, who infamously lost the ultimate race of his life—the 1960 Rome Olympics.
My journey into his life through the film, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, made me understand how devastating this loss was for him. However, Milkha Singh’s extraordinary resilience made him step out of the darkness of failure and find redemption.
But his catharsis was not easy, for Milkha had to face his inner demons and deepest fears to come through as a winner, in life.
Milkha Singh saw it all…a bloody Partition, a lost childhood, homelessness, petty crime, and victories hard won—and easily lost. And yet, even after witnessing so much horror and despondency, his will to live every precious moment of life to the fullest is what legends are made off. His life to me is satrangi, a rainbow of many vibrant colours.
For me, Milkha Singh’s life paints an intricate image of human trials and tribulations, one which evocatively illustrates that true victory lies in racing with one’s troubles, not in running away from them… aapni mushkilon se bhago nahin, unkey saath daud lagao.
I think God chose me as a medium to take Milkha Singh’s story to the world, in order to remind ourselves that there is a Milkha Singh in each one of us.
For me he was...is…and always will be an inspiration.
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
Mumbai
June 2013
Introduction
It is really difficult to be objective when you have a father as decorated as mine. His legendary deeds on the track have inspired a nation, and I surely have benefited the most because of my proximity to him.
By the time I grew up and became aware of things, he was done with his athletics career. That will always be a regret because I have never seen him run in an event. But I have felt his influence as an amazing human being every moment of my life.
Things are an lot easier for kids in our country who want to take up sports as a profession now, but when I was in my teenage years, not many parents would have taken kindly to their child’s dream of becoming a professional sportsman. But not my father. I think the greatest gift he has given me, apart from his genes, is not knowing the meaning of the word ‘impossible’, and his never-say-die attitude, is the wonderful support and guidance in helping me chart my own life and career.
He did have dreams of me becoming an Indian Administrative Services officer. But when I professed that I wanted to pursue a career in golf, the only thing he told me was that I have to be the very best in the business. I do have to thank my dad for the life that I have. If not for his love of golf after giving up running, I would have never followed him to the Chandigarh Golf Club and subsequently fallen in love with the sport.
I don’t think he expects perfection from me. But what he surely insists on is the pursuit of perfection. From very early on, he instilled some life-changing values in me, including total dedication, discipline and determination. Those have helped me achieve whatever I have managed so far in my career.
We have shared a beautiful relationship. I must mention a couple of things about him. Given his involvement with sports, he had a very busy life when we were growing up, but Dad always made sure he had time for my mother and us kids. I think the pain of losing most of his family very early on in his life made him cherish what he had much more. And thanks to him and my mother, we are a very close-knit family.
Also, even though he was a strict disciplinarian, he always treated me like a friend. He has always been there to listen to me, and pass me nuggets of great wisdom that he acquired throughout his life. In fact, I have had the first drink of my life with my father and not with my teenage friends. That was the kind of freedom he gave me.
I am glad that Rupa Publications India are publishing his autobiography. His journey has been truly amazing and I hope it will motivate the readers as much as it has motivated me.
Let me leave you with one thing that my dad always says: you can achieve anything in life. It just depends on how desperate you are to achieve it.
Jeev Milkha Singh
May 2013
Prologue
When I reflect upon my life, I can clearly see how my passion for running has dominated my life. The images that flash through my mind are those of me running…running…running…
sprinting from one shady patch to another to escape
the blistering heat of the sun on my journey to school
fleeing the massacre on that fearsome night when most
of my family was slaughtered
racing trains for fun
outrunning the police when I was caught stealing
in Shahdara
leaving everyone behind in my first race as an army
jawan so that I could get an extra glass of milk
surging past my competitors in Tokyo when I was
declared Asia’s Best Athlete
Running in Pakistan and being hailed as ‘The Flying
Sikh’
Each of these moments brings back bittersweet memories as they represent the different stages of my life, a life that has been kept afloat by my intense determination to triumph in my chosen vocation.
1
* * *
Life in Undivided India
came into this world on a cold dark night, under a thatched roof, in the small village of Gobindpura, tehsil Kot Addu in Muzzafargarh district, now in Pakistan. Till today, I do not know the exact date or time of my birth. Such details were of little consequence in those days. What mattered most to simple rural communities like ours was the present, not the past or the future, just the ebb and flow of our daily lives. However, as I grew older I realized how necessary it was to have a date of birth and so, for official reasons, it has now been recorded on my passport as 20 November 1932.
We were a large but contented family. My father, Sampuran Singh, was a small-time farmer, with a piece of land that provided the family with food and the cattle with fodder. My mother, Chawali Kaur, was a simple woman, who was devoted to her husband and children. I can still conjure up memories of her sitting at t
In those days children were married off at a very young age, and our family was no different. My father had married off all my three sisters and two of my older brothers. Amir and Daulat lived nearby with their wives and children. Among my sisters, only Makhani lived in Gobindpura. Hoondi’s home was in a village some 60 kilometres away, while Isher lived far away in Hyderabad, Sind. Isher was my favourite sister, and I would really look forward to her visits back home, especially since she would always bring me the sweets I loved—it was a huge treat.
We lived in a basic, two-roomed mud house—one room was shelter for the cattle and storeroom for the fodder, while the other was our living quarters. During the day, my brothers worked in the fields with Father, tilling the land, sowing seeds and harvesting crops. Gobind and I, being the youngest, were allowed to spend the day playing with the other village lads. At dusk, we would return home and the entire family would gather around our mother who would lovingly feed us with piping hot rotis with generous dollops of ghee.
Father, though illiterate himself, was a strong advocate of the benefits of a good education, but money was always a hindrance. He was determined that his sons study so that they could improve their status in life. However, when my older brother Makhan Singh ran away from home to enlist in the army, without completing his schooling, he was deeply disappointed. I was seven or eight years old at the time. This was in the late 1930s, as war clouds were gathering over Europe. I remember coming home from the village school one day and hearing my mother weeping and wailing as if her heart was breaking, and wondered what tragedy had occurred to make her so distressed. It was then that we heard the shattering news. Although my mother had all her other children around her, she could not cope with the news of Makhan’s departure.
With Makhan having dashed my father’s hopes of educating his sons, I became the focus of Father’s ambitions. The school I was going to was in a village nearby, where classes were held out in the open under a tree. Most of my classmates were from neighbouring villages, and we would all sit on mats on the ground around our teacher, Maulvi Ghulam Mohammad, who taught us arithmetic and Urdu. He was a stern man, and at times, when we had not done our homework or were being inattentive, he would rap us on the knuckles with a twig broken from a neem tree; it stung like a whip. I remember the flat wooden takhat (board), that I would carry with me, and the wooden pen that I would dip into a pot of ink to write my lessons in Urdu. I was completely uninterested in studying, and felt that it was something I could do without. All through the school day I would impatiently wait for the moment when the bell would ring, signalling the end of classes. I was a free bird once again and would rush off home to play with my friends.
Makhan’s departure had started taking a toll on Mother’s health and she cried all the time. Mother feared that Makhan, like other young men, would be conscripted and sent off to fight an unknown enemy and never return. We were all aware that beyond the narrow boundaries of our village, the spreading flames of the Second World War were threatening us all. Those were innocent days, people were superstitious and the wider world frightened them. Scary tales that ladai lagi hai aur log mare ja rahe (the war is on and people are dying) had reached us, and no one knew what the fate of these young men would be—would they be killed or just disappear?
She kept pleading with Father to find him and bring him back home. Father, for some reason, was quite reluctant. However, to pacify her, he went to the recruitment centre in Kot Addu, and after many inquiries heard that Makhan was in Madras, a city that was both distant and unfamiliar. Upon hearing this, Mother’s cries got louder and stronger. Despite grave reservations, my father boarded a train and set off on a journey to the unknown. When he reached Madras, it took him almost two weeks to locate my brother. He had no idea about where Makhan’s unit was or any other details; he could only ask if there were any turbaned (Sikh) soldiers around. He wandered through the city, visiting all the army centres, waiting to catch a glimpse of Makhan. He finally got some leads that led him to Makhan. His patience had paid off. Both father and son had a very emotional reunion, but when my father tried to persuade him to return home, Makhan reassured him, saying, ‘Father, don’t worry, I am safe and will come home for a holiday after six months, when I have completed my training.’
Father returned to Gobindpura, a happier man, and was able to convince Mother that Makhan was happy in his chosen profession and would be coming home soon for a holiday. Her spirits—and more importantly, health—improved after that, and she waited in eager anticipation for her son’s return.
After I had completed Class Five at the village school, my father insisted that I continue my education at a better school. Soon I was enrolled in a government school in Kot Addu, which was about seven miles from Gobindpur. The only other boy from my village to go to the same school was my friend, Sahib Singh. In those days there were no clocks or watches in any home, and it was only when the train to Multan passed by the village that I knew that it was time to start the long walk to school. It would take Sahib Singh and me almost two hours to cover the distance between our homes and school. In winter, it was so bitterly cold that my hands and feet would be numb and frozen with frostbite, and the fog so dense that often I could barely see the footpath. It was even worse in summer, the heat so intense that it felt as if the earth was on fire. I would run as fast as I could from one shady patch to another to escape from the blazing sun, but yet, I couldn’t prevent blisters from developing on the soles of my bare feet. Perhaps these were the first races I ran, at a time when I never imagined what my future profession would be.
I studied at my new school for two years. I found it extremely difficult to adjust to the new curriculum, particularly learning English, which was an alien language for me. Both Sahib Singh and I were far behind the other students, which frustrated me and made me hate school even more. But, there was no way I could avoid school—my father’s wrath would be too great. I vividly remember the day I bunked classes to go fishing with my friends, but when I returned home at the normal time, my mother warned me, telling me to hide because a friend of my father’s had spotted us and told him about it, and he was furious. I was beaten black and blue that evening and vowed never to repeat the same offence.
As a punishment, every evening, my father would make me read to him the English lesson taught that day in school. But what he never realized was that I read out the same passage every evening, which I had memorized. Since he didn’t know the language, he assumed that I was doing well in English at school, and felt extremely pleased.
I was fifteen years old by then and very conscious of the ambitions that my father had for me. But his high hopes did not achieve the results he wanted. The approaching holocaust deemed it otherwise. The events of those terrible days, as India was teetering on the brink of Independence from colonial rule, have had a lasting impact on my life, and I will never ever forget the hatred and bloodshed that had transformed men into beasts.
2
* * *
Bhaag Milkha, Bhaag
efore Independence, Gobindpur was just like one big happy family, where people would be in and out of each other’s homes, sharing a meal or enjoying a good gossip. The population was predominantly Hindu and Sikh, but we were on very cordial terms with the neighbouring Muslim villages. It was a bond that had been developed over the generations. In those days there was little emphasis on caste, creed or religion; it was only the brotherhood of man that mattered. But this easy camaraderie between villages and communities was soon to change.
In an effort to bring about a compromise between the squabbling political parties, the British had agreed to partition the subcontinent along religious lines, with Muslim-majority regions going to Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs moving to or remaining in India. In early August 1947, insidious rumours had begun to seep into the collective consciousness of the people of the region and the tension was palpable. We had heard that Hindus and Sikhs were killing Muslims; that Muslims were killing Hindus and Sikhs. What did all this mean? And why was this happening? We were simple village folk and to us the creation of an India and a Pakistan were alien concepts. Our only concerns were to till our lands, earn our daily bread and live in harmony with our neighbours, whether they were Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. How would this break up affect us? We were soon to learn how devastating the consequences were.
