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| Cole Paulson (center) |
Chandigarh, India (Punjabi)
I spent my first lonely evenings in Chandigarh, India camping out under a shady tree in a neighborhood park, scrunching my face at Punjabi characters in desperate hope of telling them apart. One night, I looked up to find myself surrounded by a posse of ten-year-olds wielding cricket bats.
“You will play with us,” their leader commanded, offering me a bat. I didn’t know the first thing about cricket, and I explained this apologetically. “No, no. Baseball. You will teach us baseball,” the boy informed me.
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| Strike 1 |
I agreed, secretly hoping I could recall the rules. My first task: assemble two teams, which proved complicated once everyone declared they wanted to play with me. (I carefully kept the fact that I had always been chosen last in PE to myself.)
I settled on doubling as ump and catcher. With each “Ball!” I declared, the batting team jumped and cheered with glee. Each “Strike!” ushered a similar chorus from the opposing team. The first run sent the entire field into an uproar. The concept of home base was entirely lost on the batter, and he ran about eight laps around the diamond before I convinced him he had scored. “We won! We won!” his teammates exclaimed. I considered correcting them, but by then it was getting dark, and mothers were beginning to call pitchers and basemen to dinner; we agreed to resume the game promptly at 5:00 the following night.
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| Batter up! |
Our baseball training sessions sadly met an abrupt halt a few weeks later, when an ambitious slugger sent a homerun through a window and an auntie-ji stormed outside, threatening to break the legs of anyone she caught playing the deviant sport again. Our batting practices were replaced by less-destructive Punjabi language tutoring and Bhangra dance lessons. But in August, the park became conspicuously deserted. Every baseball trainee, it seemed, had settled in front of a television: the Beijing Olympics had begun.
India may have a sixth of the world’s population, but only fifty-six Indians competed in Beijing. The country’s cricket heroes have no forum to compete, and for decades India’s athletics have suffered from underfunding. I assumed this meant the Olympics would be a non-event, and I would forfeit a chance to cheer for Team USA
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On the contrary, I found an Indian populace hungry for Olympic glory. TV channels repeated India’s Opening Ceremony arrival over and over, and for two weeks the press scrutinized every Indian athlete’s performance, regardless of their medal potential. The first week was a parade of grim headlines: “Indian archer off the mark”…“Indian swimmer finishes last”…
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| Chandigarh baseball team |
So when, on the second Tuesday, an Indian rifleman shot his way to a gold medal, the entire country exploded. It was India’s first-ever individual Olympic gold, and it seemed that all one billion citizens were celebrating. By that point in the summer I spent my evenings in cafes painstakingly parsing Punjabi newspaper articles, and every one focused on the triumph: proud remarks from Prime Minister Singh, interviews with the athlete’s parents, his coaches, probably his dentist. One paper, headlined “Believe in India,” argued, “No individual gold has mattered so much to so many people in the history of the Olympics.”
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| Farewell to Chandigarh |
Most thrilling was that the medalist hailed from Chandigarh, growing up mere blocks from the CLS Program. The city’s Independence Day parade that week spiraled into a massive homegrown-hero pep rally. Watching alongside my baseball team, I felt the rush of witnessing India take its long overdue place on the international arena. One sharpshooter had crystallized a nation’s giddiness at its steady rise to global eminence. India’s contemporary story is one of aggressive growth and broadening diplomatic might—some of the very reasons CLS focuses on the country. For me, more rousing than watching America rack up another medal count was this fleeting chance to ride the wave of pride and promise at a transformational moment in Indian history.
This summer, I’m returning to India for a year to work with my company’s partners there. My CLS training earned me the assignment, and I’m eager to reapply my Punjabi. But I’ve made a special request to my boss: get me there before the London Olympics, so I can cheer on Team India. And who knows? By 2016, America’s baseball team may face stiff competition from some young, Chandigarh-trained batsmen. Or better yet, by then India will get the chance to teach the world how to properly use a cricket bat.
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