PUNE, Dec 4: He grew up with no one to tell him fairy tales when he was a kid. But for Adinarayan Ranganna Kumbhar, in less than 14 years, destiny and hard work have modelled his life on the oft-repeated story of Cinderella.December 4, 1998 is a day that he will always cherish. Adjudged the best athlete among the 100-odd boys at a State sub-junior meet is never an easy task. And easy turns to impossible when your bio-data at three read: Father died early, mother deserted him, childless uncle adopted him but left him at a temple in Hyderabad.From the doors of the temple, the starving three-year-old reached a railway station and boarded a train in search of his destiny.His path crossed a 60-year-old man, Hanumant Master, from Jhat village, district Sangli. Master proved there are Good Samaritans. The old man took the little kid with him, and from there the script of a `till-then-unbounded-journey' was rewritten. Adinarayan was put in a Kannada medium school, where the physical teacher Neele, taking note of the child's athletic body advised Hanumant Master to put him in a government-run Sports Academy at Pune.``I used to jog with Neele every morning and often left him behind in short distance runs,'' remembers Adinarayan with a smile on his face. With proper guidance, Adinarayan saw himself clearing the entrance test for admission into the academy in 1996.For two years, rigorous training in the track and field under Suresh Gujrathi, a former State athlete himself, Adinarayan appears to have found the lost tracks of his life. Says Gujrathi, ``I am confident that Adinarayan will become a good athlete.'' He adds, ``Adinarayan's feet are longer than his upper body, which is very important for long jump and high jump,'' he added. He already has a gold medal in the State meet in 1997 at Balewadi and a silver in the pentathol event of the inter-zonal meet at Jaipur, representing the West Zone. Today, his success on the track and field have brought him the first moments of joy, alongwith the very necessary ingredient - confidence.``I want to continue with a career in sports more than anything else. I dream of being a medal winner for India. But I am worried about the financial part of it.'' Loneliness, however, sometimes still returns to haunt. ``I feel very lonely when I see the parents of the other students come to meet them in the weekends. There is no one who comes to see me here.'' ``Master,'' whom he calls Baba with respect, and for whom he has the deepest love possible, ``is too old now and it is impossible for him to come here considering his age''.The scars of the traumatic years with his uncle also remain, ``He used to drink a lot, and used to beat me for no reason. I don't know the reality about why my mother left me all alone in the house. Maybe she could not make ends meet. Today Baba is everything for me''.Never totally at peace with the world, Adinarayan feels that in the classroom he lacks behind in Hindi and Marathi. A fear which is robbing him of sleep. ``I am scared that if I don't perform well in studies along with sports, they might throw me out of the academy. What will happen to me then? Where will I go?,'' he asks. A child of the tracks, Adinarayan has travelled a long way already. He may have had no real yesterdays he could turn back to. But he is determined to have a good tomorrow!
