Bhubaneswar: It's hard, actually impossible, to find a veteran who has played more than 10 Olympics or World Cups across sports. That would mean an international playing career spanning 40 years. While that requires a superhuman effort, it's actually possible off the field, and Mr. Baldev Singh Kalsi knows how.
Sixty and still going strong, Kalsi has almost rode the graph of Indian hockey from the World Cup-winning zenith in 1975 to the nadir of a wooden-spoon finish at the 2012 London Olympics. The man from the United Kingdom is a veteran watcher of 11 Olympic Games and an equal number of Men's Hockey World Cups.
Being a British Airways employee has facilitated Kalsi's marathon travel around the world as you need to watch out for the weight in your pocket as a frequent flyer around the globe. "Yes, that helps," Kalsi, who is a Sikh, told the author.
Born in East Africa after his family moved there, Kalsi was glued to hockey from his schooldays in Kampala, Uganda. And when they got the opportunity to shift to the United Kingdom, the Kalsi clan didn't think twice before packing their bags for England.
One thing that didn't change in the UK was hockey. Kalsi continued to play in the local leagues before going on his first tour as a hockey watcher to the Munich Olympics in 1972. Since then, he hasn't missed visiting a single edition of the Games.
"I have seen India lift the 1975 World Cup and the last of their eight Olympic golds, in Moscow," Kalsi, who is father to an 18-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter, said proudly.
But it wasn't easy visiting tournament after tournament for the qualified mechanical engineer who did jobs ranging from tool-making to architect before finally getting a break with the British Airways in 1988.
"I had to see that my work never suffered because of my passion for hockey," he said. "Luckily I managed to strike a balance between working and watching hockey," he said with a smile on his face.
Though, for all his life, Kalsi has lived out of India, he is an Indian at heart, loving everything about the country - from food to Bollywood music to hockey.
Kishore Kumar, Mohammad Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar are his favourite singers, as his mobile phone and iPod is loaded with film songs from the the '60s and '70s. And Mr. Kalsi didn't mind humming a few for the author as he savoured India beating Netherlands.
Comments
0 comment