Alchemist Bindra and the pleasure principle
Jyoti Malhotra -
Tuesday, August 12, 2008 9:37 AM
The Arch-shot, the Alchemist, Arjuna's Inheritor and, according to CNN, Boom-Boom Bindra are only some names that the young night has spawned, in honour of the 24-hour glory that Abhinav Bindra has brought home from Beijing. In the Mahabharata, Drona taught young Arjuna to focus on the eye of the toy bird on the tree, to the exclusion of everything else. Abhinav is a worthy disciple of that genre. But as the Hindustan Times reported on Tuesday, the reason Bindra's superhuman win at the 10m rifle event stood apart from most of India's "chalta hai" attitude, was because it was painstakingly created, day by day, over the last 11 years.
Alongside the physical training, in the last week of July, here is what Abhinav volunteered to go through as part of a five-day confidence-building course in Germany to put his mind in top condition : Climbing an 8 m high wall, crossing a Burma bridge, overcoming hurdles like pizza platforms (?), a high-bar balance, spider web jumps, and a U-swing bridge.
No wonder excited Indian journalists wondered why young Bindra smiled softly and didnt pull of his shirt/ dissolve into whoops of pop patriotic delight/unleash a few Punjabi swear words, that some other Indian athletes, especially from the Punjab, are often prone to do (check out the collapse of Indian cricketers in Sri Lanka and their mealy-mouthed reactions, also in Tuesday's Hindustan Times), after the Indian national anthem in Beijing had set off a billion goose-bumps back home in the mother country.
Bindra's staggering mind-training summons up the Lance Armstrong example. The American cyclist overcame testicular cancer that had reached his lungs and his brain to win the Tour De France -- not once, but seven times -- easily considered the most arduous and spectacular bicycle road race in the world, across 23 days and more than 3500 kms in the French countryside.
On August 9, two days before Bindra's win in Beijing, Armstrong came second in the 100-mile Leadville race in Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains, USA, a challenging mountain bike course that often takes you over 10,000 feet.
Armstrong was always said to have a genetic headstart in one sense, in that his muscles produced half the amount of acid that other people did when they were fatigued, allowing his to recover faster than most other cyclists. Then there was his dedicated physical training, that increased his muscle efficiency, converting fast-twitch muscle fibres that are good for sprinting, into slow-twitch muscle fibers, said to be good for endurance sports.
According to his physiologists, Armstrong trained for both "higher maximum capacity" -- which increases the upper level of performance, just like a sprinter does -- as well as "greater submaximal capacity," that is to expend less energy for sustained performance, just like a marathoner might.
But what accounted for his seven Tour de France victories? After the last, Armstrong put it out himself : Its normal to feel pain when you push yourself to do what your body isnt accustomed to doing, but when you begin to feel pleasure in the pain, then you know you've won.
For so many lotus-eating Indians, Bindra and Armstrong just showed us the light beyond the mortal divide.