Zoom!

The week-long event begins on August 1 but Rohini heads for London on July 28, 8216;8216;just to get used to the cooler waters there and acclimatise a bit8217;8217;. After that, the Class 12 student from Chettinad Vidyashram will be off to the Dutch waters in her Zoom.

It8217;s not the first big show for Rohini, though it is of course the biggest so far. Affiliated to the Tamil Nadu Sailing Association, of which father Jayraj is founder-member and mother Aysha an ex-officio member, Rohini won gold with mate Pallavi Naik of Goa in the girls8217; 420-class category at the Asian Sailing Championships held in Mumbai in January.

If anyone is up to the task, Rohini is, given her pedigree: the First Daughter of India8217;s First Family of Sailing. Jayraj, a senior executive with an ad agency, is, according to wife Aysha, 8216;8216;scared of the water but a good enough sailor8217;8217;.

But Aysha is the pivot here, having started this story while studying marine micro-biology in the UK a couple of decades ago. 8216;8216;I am a leisure sailor,8217;8217; she says, 8216;8216;but I love the sport and started sailing while in the UK. It wasn8217;t possible to sail when in Calcutta where she worked with an ad agency and other parts of India but, once in Chennai, there was no looking back.8217;8217;

At 16, their son Ajay is a spring chicken only in age; he currently ranks among the top five among men in India. And unlike Rohini, who plans to study medicine as an alternative career option, Ajay is a sailor to the core and has no plans of shifting focus elsewhere.

The sailing bug bit Rohini and brother Ajay early on. Rohini started helming boats when she was just 11. And over the next four-odd years helmed everything from the Optimist to the 420, passing through Cadets, Lasers and Enterprises different categories of sailing boats. It8217;s a Laser Radial though, that she8217;s found fame in.

The Raus8217; obsession doesn8217;t extend merely to themselves. They are trying to make sailing a popular sport in Chennai and to create champions, even if Rohini and Ajay have a lot of competition on their hands in a few years8217; time. Aysha has set up an organisation 8212; Little Theatre 8212; to tap the fisherfolk around the Chennai coast.

8216;8216;If my children, with all their privileges, can become good sailors, why not children from the fishing communities?8217;8217; asks Aysha. 8216;8216;Surely these children have a head start because they spend all their time around the water and are natural sailors anyway. That8217;s what we are trying to do right now; coaching these children and trying to make them take to the sport. We have the infrastructure, facilities, coaches, everything. All they have to do is take part.8217;8217;

For now, though, the spotlight is on Rohini and Ajay, and youngsters like Abhimanyu Nithyanand the other Indian headed for the world meet, who are making India dream. No harm in that, except that sports-lovers here have dreamt all too often with child prodigies being a dime a dozen. And you just hope that Rohini8217;s medical career stays away from the picture for long enough for this dream to not frizzle out.