Coaching India

The red floppy hat on his head does little to protect him from the harsh morning sun or from the sniggers of his burly,spandex-clad pupils. But the headgear is hardly a fashion statement. Rather,it is his way of paying ultimate tribute to a person who first sparked his love for Indiaactor Raj Kapoor. With his own laal topi Roosi in place,Emzar Maxaradze,the 41-year old Georgian coach of the Indian Greco-Roman wrestling squad,wears his affection for India on both his sleeve and his crown.

At a practice session in Sonepat,Haryana,wrestlers hang on to every word of Maxaradzes advice. He chooses his words carefully. Before he arrived here four years ago,the coach from Tbilisi couldnt speak a word of English,let alone Hindi. Abhi mein bol sakta hoon,thoda thoda, he says before turning to the wrestlers. Ram ram bhai,kal aur mehnat karenge, he tells them as another practice session comes to an end.

I came here shortly after the 2008 Olympics and in the four years that I have been here,it has got very lonely at times, says Maxaradze. But these years have also taught him a lot about the country. Travelling on state transport buses from Sonepat to Delhi and back,Maxaradze began understanding the real India. My family had come visiting once and I was travelling back from Delhi with my two boys,Vitali and Revazi. I was unable to get into the crowded bus and the bus left without us. Then,a few minutes later,it returned and picked us up. Someone had informed the conductor of my plight, he says. Even in Georgia,nobody would do that for me.

Its hard to see a man who has made his life crushing torsos get emotional but thats just what India seems to have done to Maxaradze. I feel at home here,more than I do even in Georgia.

So,Maxaradze now likes to pronounce his last name as Maharaja and he has a closer association with the vegetable vendors in Sonepat than with many of his relatives in Tbilisi. Now even my children have started understanding Hindi. Vitali likes Kareena Kapoor and Revazi is a fan of Ranbir. You see,its all in the family, he says,humming a tune from a Raj Kapoor film that sums up his India connection aptly: Jeena yahaan,marna yahaan,iske siva,jana kahaan.

Stanislav Lapidus,KazakhstanShooting

Shivani Naik

Beshbarmak it means five fingers in Kazakh is a traditional boiled meat specialty that gets Kazakhs licking their fingers. Stanislav Lapidus swears by that brothy,oniony,noodley and true-to-the meat flavour. And while this boiled dish is far removed from desi butter chicken,that didnt stop Lapidus from challenging Indias international rifle shooter Imran Hassan Khan to a cooking competition a few years ago to decide who could cook better butter chicken. Im sorry to say this, says Lapidus,sounding anything but apologetic,but even Imran appreciated just how delicious my Indian-styled chicken was.

Recalling that meal sitting at the Balewadi shooters camp in Pune and reeling off Hindi names for various dals,Lapidus says hes adapted well to India now,though when he came here in 2003,his first instinct was to take the first flight out back to Astana in Kazakhstan.

My first reaction was very negative when I came to Mhow as an army coach in 2003. The accommodation offered to me made me want to scoot. But my wife insisted I give India a try and slowly things settled down and the Commanding Officer was most helpful, says the 60-year-old.

Over the years,he has grown used to many thingsincluding the sheer mental malleability of Indian shooters who,he says,absorb information faster than all other shooters he has coached. Indians are phenomenally talented for this particular sport. At informal world coaches gatherings,I often speak about how different and fiercely dedicated Indian shooters tend to be.

Heading into the Olympic year,Lapidus is getting used to cocooning his shooters from the pressure of expectations. He learnt the tricks of politely answering medal-queries when his daughter Nastya started badgering him about results. The 14-year-old who came to India when she was five,now studies at Vidya Valley in Pune,where shes picked up more than a smattering of Hindi.

When Lapidus is not working,he likes to go fishing. Hes found an agro-tourism hub at a lake at Saguna Baug at Neral near Karjat where the Lapidus family routinely goes underwater fishing. To de-stress,we visit monuments and museums in our spare time, says Lapiduss wife Irina.

And what does Lapidus count as his biggest achievement in India? Teaching Gagan shooter Gagan Narang how to swim. He was petrified. One day,I just strapped a float and fin onto him and pushed him in the water, he laughs.

Blas Iglesias Fernandez,CubaBoxing

Daksh Panwar

Ignoring the stretched-out hand,Blas Iglesias Fernandez quickly joins his palms and says namaste. Indias Cuban boxing coach isnt trying to impress; hes only playing safe. I was new in India when I was introduced to a lady at a function. I extended my hand and at the same time,thrust my neck forward to give her a peck on the cheek. But she was startled and backed away, he remembers. After that incident,even if I meet a guy,I prefer a namaste over a handshake, says the 56-year-old coach with a smile.

Clearly,Fernandez is a quick learner,which is why he has managed to live in India for so long,having first set foot here 22 years ago. Vijender Singh was a toddler at that time and Indias latest boxing sensation,Vikas Krishan,wasnt even born then.

Fernandez was training a junior team in Cuba when the Indians came looking for a coach in 1990. The Cuban federation forwarded my name for the job,and off I was for my first trip abroad, he says.

On my first evening in Delhi,I went out and took a rickshaw to look around a bit. When I came back to my hotel room,I was crying. I saw little boys begging and people living on the streets. I saw poverty for the first time in my life, he says,adding: Dont get me wrong,Cuba isnt a rich country but because of communism,theres not so much disparity there. But gradually,you get used to it. You see the extremely rich and the poor. And India is so big,it assimilates all, he says.

It has assimilated him,so much so that the Cuban is one of the few constants in Indian boxing. When I first came,boxing was very low down the pecking order, he says.

He gives an example to make his point. Earlier,at the parking lot at the National Institute of Sports NIS in Patiala,you could find a few cars parked and they belonged to the top athletes. Next to them would be two-wheelers that belonged to wrestlers and weightlifters,and then,in one corner,there would be cycles. The cycles belonged to boxers. Nowadays,next to the cars of athletes and wrestlers stand the bigger cars,even SUVs,that are owned by boxers, says Fernandez. I feel proud to have been part of this change. I feel good that they are doing well in the ring and in life.

His sense of achievement hasnt come without sacrifices like being away from his wife and his daughter who is 24 now. Of course,I miss them. They have never been to India. They wanted to join me here in 2005,and I sent them tickets as well,but a day before they were to come,there was a rule change that said we couldnt bring our families here, he says.

Life back home in Cuba was different but Fernandez has now got used to India. Its different there. Every weekend,you go to a party,drink and danceone of the reasons Cubans are good at boxing is because they dance. It teaches you coordination. At 35,you miss all that,at 56,maybe not that much.

So how much of an Indian has he become in all these years? When I go back to Cuba,I miss India. I ask my wife to cook Indian food for me. She buys masalas and prepares butter chicken only to hear me say its no good, Fernandez chuckles.

For foreign coaches coming to India,he has a few tips to share: be quick to adapt to local customs and culture. Dont try to change the surroundings,change yourself. Make friends.

MICHAEL NOBBS,AustraliaHockey

Johnson TA

In the ten months that Michael Nobbs has been Indias chief hockey coach,he has been through five different SIM cards. I just lost my fifth SIM. It is not a problem getting them. It is a problem finding them. I lose SIMs all the time, he says. But what exasperates him even more than losing SIM cards is dealing with roaming charges. I cannot believe that you go from one state to another and there are different tariffs. In Australia,you can go anywhere in the country and use the same carriers and there are no change in rates, he says.

While hockey takes up most of his time through a week,Nobbs unwinds in the evening with a cold beer,chatting with his two daughters on Skype. My family is in Perth. I have two young girlsone is a hockey player and the other is a figure skater. I talk to them on Skype everyday. My older daughter is in Russiashe is a figure skater. My younger one is in Sydney. Being away from them is tough, he says.

He may be away from home but Nobbs says he is no stranger to Indian culture. I have known about Indian culture since I was a five-year-old, he says. He loves Indian food and over weekends generally heads 20 km away from the Sports Authority of India training centre on the outskirts of Bangalore to the city centre to dig into biryani,gulab jamuns,tandoori chicken,rogan josh and all that stuff.

Food here at the SAI centre is designed for athletes. It is nutritious and fine but it is not

good Indian food. We

go out on Saturdays or Sundays, says Nobbs.

Though he has seen a bit of India,Nobbs is hoping his job will take him to many more parts of the country. I want to get around to seeing more. I am going to see the Coorg hockey festival on April 21. I want to see kids playing hockey. There is a lot of talent and I want to get around to see where the talent is, he says.

Lin Chae Woon,South KoreaArchery

Vinayak Padmadeo

After much persuasion,Lin Chae Woon poses with a few archers training at the Tata Archery Academy in Jamshedpur. For the past two years,the Korean has been keeping a close eye on the progress of Indian archerys biggest namesDeepika Kumari and Jayanta Talukdar,among others.

The coach from Korea who has been in India for almost a decade is reluctant to talk about anything but archery. Not many,including the coaching staff at the academy,know what he does after he leaves the training groundssome say he occasionally hits the driving range in Jamshedpur. No golf. I watch TV at home and sleep. We train in the morning and also at the night,so no time, says Lin in halting English.

After staying in the Tata guest house,Lin has now moved to a plush apartment but he still depends on a cook for his meals. Food is good. Korean food is also spicy,so no problem, he says.

Still,he admits he does get tired of being served fiery chicken curry regularly and so on many days he prefers boiled vegetables over everything else.

Though he doesnt do much on his own other than driving to the training venue,on rare occasions,he goes grocery shopping in Bistupurs local market,armed with a just one question in Hindi: kitna?

Alexander Artsybashev,RussiaAthletics

Jonathan Selvaraj

Halfway into making a cake to celebrate his 42nd birthday on March 30,Russian race walking coach Alexander Artsybashev realised he was in a bit of trouble. He had already caramelised sugar in milk but he couldnt get crisp flatbreads to layer the mixture bubbling in his hostel room at NIS Patiala. So,Artsybashev headed to the NIS canteen and got a hundred of the brittle chapattis the canteen served. His fellow coaches and race walkers chowed down without complaint into what they thought was an exotic Russian dessert. It was quite good really, says race walking head coach

Gurdev Singh.

While that evening was salvaged,Artsybashev,who claims to be a pretty good cook, has had his share of culinary disasters in India. In my first month,I tried to make a Russian style chicken soup for the athletes. They said it was wonderful but the next day,they were all down with upset stomachs, says Artsybashev. That disaster notwithstanding,his trainees,still head to his room for slap up meals of spaghetti and stir fried pork.

For the coach from Chelyabinsk in the Urals,coming to India was something he was keen on because he believed the two cultures have common roots. I was quite excited about coming to India. We believe that the Vedic religion originated from the Urals and back home,we have a number of holy men who live like sadhus,alone in the mountains. I saw an old Sikh man on the road in Patiala and with his long hair and sword he looked like a picture of my great grandfather,but with a turban, he says.

But it has taken Artsybashev time to get used to just how slowly things can move in India. Its both the best and the worst thing about India, he says. When I coached walkers in Europe,I was always screaming. When I wanted something done,I screamed and it got done. In India,decisions take their time no matter how much I shout,so I have stopped shouting. At least,my blood pressure must have gone down now.

And while Artsybashev came to India looking to explore the country,he hasnt got many opportunities in the ten months that he has been around. I have a limited contract. My main focus is to improve the walkers who have immense talent. So I cant just head off to explore. So while I am curious to go and see Dharamsala,which is near the high-altitude training centre at Shilaru,and also Goa,that will have to wait, he says.

In the meantime,hes happy with the small discoveries he makes every day. At his birthday celebrations in his hostel room,Artsybashev put on his choice of party music. I was playing some electronic music and reggae. After some time,the walkers asked me to change it and play some Punjabi music, he says. They chose the Singh is King song from the film of the same name. It is Punjabi mixed with rap. I dont understand it but now I cant get enough of it, he says.