THE INDIAN DREAM

There were seven trophies on my mother’s bedside table: old iron cups, which time had robbed of their sheen and covered in dark rust as well as a thick layer of dust. The biggest cup took pride of place in the middle; it had long, slender handles, while the concavity itself was as deep and wide as a helmet. The other trophies sat in its shadow, in descending order of size. The smallest ones had lids, which, if you lifted them up, released the smell of soil, of summery soil.

There were no engraved metal plaques on the trophies’ wooden bases. All information about provenance — date, location, discipline — was missing. For all I knew, they could be antique drinking goblets, once touched by my ancestors’ lips. In fact, as children, we tried to drink from the empty cups and ended up sipping dust. We cried.

My mother polished the trophies with a cloth, but the rust refused to budge and the dust returned — the way dust returns, always and everywhere. The only place it didn’t get was underneath the trophies, beneath their wooden bases. These small squares were so clean they seemed to sparkle. Now and again, I’d lift all the trophies from the bedside table and gaze at the emergent black lacquer — a series of miniature lakes — in the hope of ascertaining the trophies’ origins. Sometimes I’d see an ancient woman in those depths, drinking with trembling hands: my mother’s mother’s mother.

Not much later, the world changed forever, and everything that once appeared to have depth became hard and flat. It was like a slap in the face: wake up!

The trophies came from India, where, as a girl, my mother had run across the playing fields of Queen Victoria Girls Inter College in Agra. This is where her bare feet had dashed across the warm soil, the loose sand. This was the smell under the lids. She was known for getting off to a flying start. Nobody could hit the ground running like my mother.

‘I had the best ears,’ my mother told us. ‘And the fastest legs.’

My father claimed she was often on her way before the starting signal had even sounded. ‘The difference between a flying start and a false start is open to discussion in India,’ he whispered in my ear.

My mother still had good ears. She took off a slipper and used it to hit my father on the head. Then she said: ‘There was no such thing as a starting signal in those days.’ This prompted her to tell us about the man at the starting line, an official in a white sleeveless jumper who enunciated his words very carefully. Six words: ‘On your marks, get set, go!’

My mother sprinted off wearing only a single slipper, right through the living room and dining room. It’s a good thing the sliding doors were open. When she got to the end of the dining room, she threw her arms up in the air. Then she walked back with a smile on her face.

‘Let’s do it together now,’ she said. ‘A competition.’

She put her other slipper back on and took up the starting position. I followed her example.

My father was expected to officiate, speaking the six words the way the official in India had done, but wearing a tatty sweater, because my father didn’t own a white sleeveless jumper. New clothes were wasted on him, according to my mother. On Saturdays, there was underwear on the washing line with holes big enough for birds to fly through. One day it would probably be mended by an Indian tailor.

‘Theo,’ my mother said.

Surmising that he might end up doing something wrong, my father didn’t want to be an official. But whenever my mother uttered his first name, he knew he had no choice. His name was synonymous with a death threat.

‘On your marks …’ my father said, somewhat reluctantly. ‘Get set.’ And then: ‘Go!’

And off I went, but my mother was already at the sliding doors. She won the sprint by a considerable margin — the length of the dining room.

My father shook his head, but was afraid to protest.

I was six when my parents first took me to PAC, an athletics club in Rotterdam. It was a Saturday morning in the 1980s. The trainer went by the unusual name of Freek Ruigrok and he wore a purple-and-yellow tracksuit. My mother had given me shorts to wear. I was the only boy in my age group with black socks.

We ran a lap around the dark-red cinder track, Freek Ruigrok in front, the little ones following behind in an ever-lengthening trail. Some children had been sent because their parents thought they might benefit from exercise — boys with fat calves and chubby faces, their shoes dragging across the coarse cinders. And then there were the children who’d been registered for athletics because it was good for the parents — boys who couldn’t or wouldn’t sit still, who had to run, jump, and bounce around. I belonged to the latter group. My body fizzed with energy; food colourings had a disastrous effect.

‘Why don’t you get him to run ten laps,’ my father had said to the trainer. ‘That way he’ll be a bit calmer at home.’ Now he and my mother were sitting on the grass beside the track. It looked like a peaceful scene — from a distance, anyway. My young parents enjoying the peace and quiet.

My father was trying to read an article, probably one about prostates. He’d recently become a prostate cancer specialist. He tried to read an article on the topic every weekend, but my mother wouldn’t let him work at home. And so he usually read the articles on the sly, on the toilet. Whenever he spent too long on the toilet, my mother would press her ear to the door. ‘I hear papers,’ she’d say. ‘I hear rustling!’

‘I have rights, too,’ came the reply from the other side. ‘I’m allowed to do a number two.’

My mother would sit down on the floor, pointing her nose to the narrow opening between the threshold and the bottom of the door. ‘I can’t smell a thing!’

‘I’m constipated,’ my father replied. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘You’re working,’ my mother yelled. ‘You’re reading an article.’

‘No, I’m not!’

My mother banged her fists on the door. ‘Get out!’

‘When I’m done, when I’ve taken a shit.’

Sometimes it took up to half an hour before the toilet was flushed and the door was carefully opened. My mother had been waiting all that time, growing more impatient and more irate by the minute. She blocked my father’s path and ordered him to spread his arms and legs so she could search him.

‘I took a shit,’ my father shouted. ‘I’m not a criminal.’

My mother frisked my father’s body — up and down, front and back. She would have made a good border-control officer in the Eastern bloc. There were two scenarios: either she’d feel the papers beneath his clothes, or she’d find them behind the toilet bowl, hidden under the waste pipe. The conclusion was always the same. My mother would tear up the article over the toilet. My father, on his knees, would fish the snippets out of the bowl.

Such scenes make an indelible impression on a child.

Likewise, whenever my mother was in the kitchen, or making beds, or even just looking the other way, my father tried to read and annotate articles about prostate cancer. He rarely succeeded. There were times my mother was so enraged she tried to eat an article.

I waved at my parents from the other side of the athletics track. I was running right behind Freek Ruigrok, almost at the front. My mother waved back. She’d got up and was urging me to go faster.

‘Jaldi! Jaldi!’ rang out across the central grass area. Faster! Faster!

But the instant she noticed my father reading an article, she lunged at his papers, like a bird of prey swooping down on its victim.

This time, it was my father’s voice that rang out across the grass: ‘Help! Help!’

It was futile, since my mother had already run off with the article. She bolted across the grass and ripped it up over the nearest bin.

(Now, more than 20 years later, my father is still doing research into prostate cancer, at Toronto’s University Health Network. He’s a leading researcher and publishes regularly in major medical journals. There’s no breakthrough yet; the cure for prostate cancer is slow to materialise. Sometimes I think a remedy could’ve been found a long time ago, had it not been for my mother ripping up, flushing, or devouring all of those articles. I shudder to think of all those men who died prematurely or who became impotent. Maybe my mother doesn’t mind, cruel hangman that she is.)

After that first training session, my father didn’t come along again. But my mother never missed one during my first year. She was more fanatic than any football dad. Every Saturday morning and every Wednesday afternoon, she’d take me to the athletics track and encourage me vociferously from the sidelines. After that first training session, Freek Ruigrok had taken to calling me Jaldi, a name that the other kids would soon adopt and that would stick until the age of 21.

My first competition was PAC’s club championship. The programme for the boys aged six to seven consisted of four elements: the 40-metre sprint; a children’s version of shotput, with a foam ball; long jump; and the 600 metres. I was a little nervous, but it was nothing compared to my mother’s agitation. She was full of questions, and her hands were shaking something terrible, so much so that she couldn’t pin the race number on the back of my orange club shirt. I felt a pin prick in my back and was about to get angry when I saw the tears in her eyes.

‘Mama,’ is what I would say now. ‘Calm down — there’s no need to cry. I know you’re proud and that you won’t be later on, but that you love me because I’m your child. Dry your tears, mother, and give me a hug. We’ll hold each other across time.’

In the end, Jurjen Coenen’s mother helped us with the race number. Jurjen also lived on Jericholaan, but he was a year older than me. He was competing in the next category up, and by the close of day he’d have set a new club record on the 1,000 metres. Later, when we were both competing in the Juniors, he was to be my rival. Or rather: my mother’s rival.

First on the programme for the youngest athletes was the 40-metre sprint. The distance felt interminable at the time, but now, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s just a quick dash, a scratch on one’s memory, practically invisible.

My mother escorted me to the starting line. For the umpteenth time, she asked me if I knew which series and which track I was in. I nodded: third series, track four. Then she pulled up my t-shirt and stuffed it back into my shorts. Had it not been for her trembling hands, she’d have retied my laces, too.

It was touching, my mother’s fretting. But embarrassing, too. While the boys in the second series were getting ready, my mother asked me: ‘Did you have a wee?’

I had a sneaking suspicion I’d done something wrong, so I quickly shook my head.

‘Ernest,’ she said, in the same menacing tone she’d say my father’s name.

The toilets over in the canteen were too far away; I’d miss my series if I went.

‘You can’t win on a full bladder,’ my mother said, and pointed to a tree beside the track.

I tried to make my way there as inconspicuously as possible, but was spotted by two other children in my age group. So before you could count to three, everybody on and around the track knew I was pissing behind a tree. There was laughter — the kind of laughter that cuts through a child’s soul.

‘Take no notice,’ my mother said, and adjusted my t-shirt again. Taking no notice, especially not of other people, was my mother’s guiding principle in life, a maxim she herself lived by.

Then the starting signal rang out, and off we went. ‘Jaldi!’ my mother screamed. ‘Jaldi! Jaldi!’ She egged me on with the fervour of an entire Indian family: father, mother, two sons, numerous daughters.

I may not have got off to a flying start, but I was still the first to cross the chalk finishing line. With my chest out, as Freek Ruigrok had taught me. My mother was standing on the sidelines, ready to congratulate me — she’d sprinted 40 metres as well. But first we had to retrace our steps, backwards, so the members of the jury could see the numbers on our backs. This was the era of stopwatches, of beeps, of pencil, paper, and eraser.

‘You see,’ my mother said. ‘Weeing helps.’ She wrapped me in her warm, strong arms. Her eyes were filled with tears. ‘Always listen to your mother,’ she whispered. That was her advice to me. If I lived by that rule, everything would be all right.

I made two invalid attempts in the long jump. The third jump earned me a fourth place, but I slipped from first to second position in the intermediate rankings. My mother, meanwhile, had been banned from the track for harassing the officials. She took exception to my jumps being declared invalid.

‘He’s so young,’ she said to the official sitting on the chair by the take-off board after my first jump. ‘And he’s trying so hard.’

After my second jump, she pushed down the red flag and grabbed the white flag out of the official’s hands and raised it up into the air. And when the other officials refused to measure the distance, my mother walked into the sandpit with measuring steps before solemnly declaring: ‘Four metres, 70 centimetres’ — a distance that would’ve been a club record, if not a new world record for the six to seven age category, if there was one.

Eventually my mother became an official herself, but not before first failing the diploma of the Royal Dutch Athletics Federation seven times. She was determined to become an official not for altruistic reasons, but because of the packed lunches. If you officiated at an athletics meet, you were given a packed lunch and a few tea or coffee vouchers — an arrangement that was just as attractive as a supermarket bargain.

As an official, my mother always tried to swap her drinks vouchers for packed lunches. Before the first part of the programme got underway, she’d speak to all the other officials and inform them of the exchange rate. Every now and then, she’d miss an invalid throw because she was engaged in a heated discussion with a colleague about the maximum number of vouchers she was prepared to swap for a packed lunch.

Where my mother goes, trade follows.

Every competition day, my brothers and my father were expected to come to the athletics track at noon, and we were each given a packed lunch. For this — for a transparent plastic bag with white rolls, each spread with a thick layer of margarine and filled with ham, cheese, and paté; for currant buns and apples — my mother pressed stopwatches, measured distances, and placed bars at the correct height. We scoffed it all greedily enough, though — we knew we wouldn’t be getting anything else at home later.

I became club champion in my age category, having won both the ball throw and the 600 metres. During the latter event, my mother ran nearly the entire distance on the grass beside the track. Some mothers stared, unable to believe their eyes; others just shook their heads in pity. But my mother took no notice. On the final stretch, she kept chanting: ‘Jaldi! Jaldi!’

The podium was made of three orange oil drums of different heights. The announcement of my name was followed by applause that continued until my mother finally stopped. I climbed the tallest oil drum and waited for the chairman to come forward. He began by handing out the prizes to the boys standing next to me on the podium. Their names are buried under thousands of other names in my memory; they’re impossible to retrieve from oblivion. Then the chairman stepped sideways and stood right in front of me.

My first prize, my first trophy: club champion, boys aged six to seven, 1987. I searched for my mother in the crowd and found her laughing and beaming. It was the first occasion I saw her happy, like other mothers. It was as if time jumped forward a little, stirred by a sudden summery gust of wind.

When I stood by her side, she told everyone I’d inherited my talent from her and her sisters. ‘We were all gifted athletes,’ she told the chairman. ‘We were always winning trophies and medals. Barefoot.’ At that she showed the calloused skin on her feet, unsolicited — something other mothers would never do, however exuberant they might be.

Back on Jericholaan, I was told to show my prize to the neighbours, even those across the street. Everybody had to know that I’d become club champion. The next day, my mother came with me to school and insisted that I show off my trophy in every single classroom. Miss Bierenbroodspot, who was usually incredibly strict, was afraid to say no. It must have been something in my mother’s eyes — bloodthirstiness, probably.

In the years that followed, I won countless prizes, and they always had to be shown to as many people as possible. Showing off is quintessentially Indian. I remember the many long car journeys home after competitions in various parts of the Netherlands. Back in Rotterdam, my mother would wake everybody up so we could get ready to assume our positions. As soon as our house came in sight, she’d yell: ‘Now!’ My father would have to slam on the horn and drive up and down Jericholaan, and later Tiberiaslaan, several times, until all the neighbours had seen us: my father squeezing the steering wheel, my brothers laughing, my mother waving as though she were the Queen, and me, forced to hold my medal or trophy out of the window.

And then one day an old man in a red suit turned up on our doorstep. He had a carefully tended moustache and introduced himself as Mr Kumar. Thinking he was a door-to-door salesman, someone with Miracle Wipes in his suitcase, I tried to close the door. But then Mr Kumar pointed to the gold-emblazoned emblem near his chest: Athletics Federation of India.

A little later, Mr Kumar was sitting at the table in our living room. He held his tea cup in both hands and took a sip every now and then. As a rule, nobody was let into our home. Schoolfriends, acquaintances, my father’s colleagues: they all had to wait outside. My mother was ashamed of the mess. Her compulsive hoarding had reached new heights after she’d acquired a load of surplus extractor hoods. We needed a psychologist more than a Miracle Wipe. Mr Kumar either didn’t notice the mess, or he thought it was perfectly normal to see a tower of VCRs in the living room. Perhaps his wife was impossible, too, and all Indian women were committed collectors.

My mother talked to Mr Kumar in Hindi, interspersed with the occasional English word: ‘champion’, ‘javelin’, ‘free lunch’. I wanted to get up from the table, but my mother stopped me. Mr Kumar had come for me, she said.

‘All the way from Bombay,’ the representative of the Indian Athletics Federation added.

My birthplace. I smiled.

Mr Kumar also knew that I’d been born in Bombay; it was more or less the reason for his visit. But I wasn’t to find out until later.

When the tea was finished, we headed upstairs. First off, my mother showed Mr Kumar her own prizes, the seven iron trophies on her bedside cabinet.

‘I remember,’ Mr Kumar said, while lifting the biggest cup off the bedside cabinet. ‘Lucknow, 1957.’

My mother nodded. For a split second I thought I saw tears, but it was a shimmer, a film over her eyes, as if she was looking through the dust, through the rust, and saw the shiny trophy she’d held aloft as a young girl.

‘I was the fastest among thousands of girls,’ my mother whispered.

‘On your marks, get set, go!’ Mr Kumar said, and winked.

I was expecting the story that went with the wink, but Mr Kumar put the cup back, in the exact same spot, on the dark, dust-free square — a seal on the past.

Then we made our way to my room. My desk was a mess; it was full of open textbooks and exercise books, apple cores, and chocolate wrappers. I was in my penultimate year of secondary school, and in two weeks’ time I was sitting my first mock exams. I had another 500 lines of ancient Greek to read (Histories by Herodotus). It was an undertaking I wished I could run away from, to the athletics track, but my mother kept a close eye on me. In fact, she never lost sight of me.

Mr Kumar made a beeline for my trophy cabinet. My father had knocked together a special structure with a glass door, so my medals, trophies, and cups wouldn’t get covered in dust. Every weekend, I opened the door and put in a new prize. My collection had almost outgrown the cabinet.

‘May I?’ Mr Kumar asked.

I nodded.

He opened the glass door and picked up a heavy medal. It was the first prize of a multi-event in Gorinchem. I’d begun to specialise in the throwing events: shotput, javelin, and discus. I excelled at the latter. The distance I’d thrown in Gorinchem had earned me a track record and a high position in the rankings for that year, 1998. The Dutch championships were taking place in Amsterdam in July. It was a lot more appealing to me than my Greek exam.

Mr Kumar picked up a trophy and held it close to his face. The reflective cup distorted his features into a caricature with enormous eyebrows. He tried to read the inscription on the metal plate on the base. He produced some guttural sounds, followed by: ‘Most interesting.’ The trophy was replaced. Mr Kumar had to stand on tiptoe to see the top shelf — the shelf with the largest trophies.

‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Very, very nice.’ He made it sound as if he was interested in purchasing the prizes.

I told him the story behind every cup: the date, the location, the discipline. Mr Kumar nodded continuously, and muttered a few lines in Hindi each time. The only word I understood was ‘Bombay’. Mr Kumar was really pleased with my place of birth.

Then he said: ‘I want to make you a very special offer.’ His dark eyebrows appeared to momentarily detach from his face, to hover in the air.

Every country has its black page in history, a trauma it simply can’t come to terms with. India’s greatest collective trauma may well be athletics. The most recent Olympic accolade dates back to 1900, when Norman Pritchard won silver medals in the 200-metre sprint and the 200-metre hurdles. But Pritchard was Anglo-Indian. Exclude him, and the overall count is extremely sparse. In a word, it’s nil.

India isn’t exactly a high-flyer in other Olympic disciplines, either. The only sport in which the country does well is field hockey. The national team has won a total of eleven medals, including eight golds. The first individual gold wasn’t achieved until 2008, in Beijing, by 25-year-old Abhinav Bindra, who won the ‘10-metre air rifle’, and at a stroke became India’s most eligible bachelor — according to his mother, that is.

Abhinav Bindra’s win brought the total Olympic medal haul to eighteen, thereby equalling Uzbekistan.

A population of 1.1 billion, yet so few medals — it’s a deep-seated trauma, not to mention a great mystery. Some researchers have made the link between poverty and the lack of success. Sport is a luxury available to few Indians. But Uzbekistan is also poor, other researchers argue. According to them, the problem lies with the Indian physique, which is unsuited to sports such as judo, athletics, swimming, gymnastics, rowing, and wrestling. The Indian physique really only lends itself to leisurely sports such as cricket, which isn’t an Olympic discipline unfortunately.

The research notwithstanding, the Indian nation remains hopeful. And the flame of that hope was kindled by a statement by the minister of sport following the debacle of the 1996 Olympic Games: a single bronze medal. He announced on national television: ‘We have plenty of talent, but it really needs to be nurtured.’ This kickstarted a veritable manhunt for talent, one that continues to this day. Not long ago, the Ministry of Sport launched a project in the province of Tamil Nadu to find swimmers and gymnasts among the fishermen and street performers there. Tightrope-walkers are plucked off the street in the hope of beating China on the beam at the next Olympics.

Perhaps Mr Kumar was one of the first envoys from the Ministry of Sport in search of talent — all the way in Rotterdam. Mr Kumar’s plan involved me taking on Indian nationality, which was possible thanks to my mother and my birth in Bombay. In exchange, I’d be given accommodation in Secunderabad, near the Gymkhana Ground, India’s athletics Valhalla. A top European coach would be flown in as well.

Mr Kumar looked at me expectantly. He’d spoken rapidly, the smell of gold in his nostrils. In his eyes, I was already the first Indian to win a track-and-field medal at the Olympics. A visit to the embassy in The Hague was all it would take. Perhaps there was a passport waiting for me already.

I thought of my exams. Here was my chance of escape.

But my mother didn’t like the sound of Mr Kumar’s offer. She shook her head and then pointed resolutely to my desk, to the open textbooks and exercise books. I couldn’t leave. I had to listen to my mother. I had to learn Greek lines by heart.

Mr Kumar raised his voice and made angry gestures. He wasn’t ready to give up his dream, the Indian dream.

There was no reaction from my mother. That’s to say, not right there and then, not without a rolling pin handy.

I sat down at my desk and put a page of the Histories in front of me: the conversation between Solon and Croesus as to who is the happiest of all men. The exam was inescapable.

My mother beckoned for Mr Kumar to come with her. They left my room and walked down the stairs — nimble footsteps followed by a heavy tread. The kitchen door was opened, and not much later I heard my mother scream like a madwoman. Croesus wasn’t the happiest of all men, and nor was Mr Kumar.

When I heard a loud crash, I ran downstairs. I saw Mr Kumar lying flat on the carpet in the living room. After fleeing the kitchen, he’d bumped into the tower of VCRs. The carpet was littered with pieces of black casing and other components. My mother was busy picking them up and putting them into a plastic carrier bag — a lifetime’s worth of work for a repairman in India.

I helped Mr Kumar up and escorted him to the front door. I had to hold him tight; he was trembling all over. My mother went on collecting bits of VCR as though nothing had happened.

On the doorstep, Mr Kumar burst into an incoherent and emotional monologue, shouting things about Queen Victoria Girls Inter College and about the Ahluwalia family, about my mother’s sisters. I’d inherited my talent from Aunt Jasleen; I mustn’t waste it. I mustn’t listen to my mother, the way Jasleen had listened to her mother. In the end, all Mr Kumar said was: ‘Jasleen, Jasleen, Jasleen.’ Like a record that was stuck.

He walked down the street with his tail between his legs.

Inside, the carpet had been cleared. In the corner of the living room, a number of VCRs had been stacked on top of one another. My mother was sitting on the sofa, staring into space. She was sobbing quietly. I stood behind her, not moving.

After a long time, my mother said: ‘Aunt Jasleen is a renowned lung specialist.’ Then she sent me up to my room, to my desk.

My feet shot up the stairs. At the top, I didn’t go straight to my own room, but instead opened the door to my parents’ bedroom. The top drawer of the bedside cabinet, below the trophies, held old photos — really old ones, from before I was born.

There was one photo of the entire Ahluwalia family, which had survived, which hadn’t been lost to history, buried under earth and rubble, scraps and shards. My mother had showed me that photo once. ‘This is my family,’ she’d said. ‘This is my father, this is my mother, and these are my brothers and sisters. And this is me.’

I found the photo at the very bottom of the drawer and took it to my room. It showed two young men, eight girls, a man with a white beard, and a woman whose braids were so long you could use them for jumping rope. A child on the left, a child on the right: whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

The longer I looked at the photo, the more depth it acquired — the dreamy depth I’d seen in things as a child, as if I’d never really woken up, not quite. I saw a little girl smiling at me. She had shiny hair and a young, pretty face: my mother. She was wearing the uniform of Queen Victoria Girls Inter College. The two girls next to her were wearing the same clothes: dark dresses, white collars. They were the last two daughters to go to school, the youngest children. In the photo, their eyes sparkled like stars.

The girl to my mother’s right was Sitara, a sister whose son would one day fail to return from work — one day, later, future and past.

Standing to my mother’s left was Jasleen. She was three years older and perhaps half a centimetre taller. She was the only one not to stare into the camera lens, as if her mind were elsewhere; as if she were a dreamer, like me. Then the photographer released the shutter: a flash, and a white cloud diffused.

Aunt Jasleen was an exceptional heptathlete. She was the fastest of all eight sisters and was able to throw the discus at least 40 steps, or if the person measuring the distance had short legs, as much as 50. It wasn’t uncommon for the steps to be totted up by someone who couldn’t count very well. And so it happened that Aunt Jasleen’s training record stood at the magical distance of 86 steps.

Jasleen Ahluwalia was unbeatable in the discus circle. That’s to say: she was unassailable if the wind direction was favourable. Aunt Jasleen’s talent only manifested itself when there was a slight headwind, which allowed the discus to climb higher and higher before returning to earth after an endless descent. If the wind came from the wrong direction — from the back or sideways — or there was no wind at all, the discus would slip out of her hand and tilt in the air like a soup bowl before crashing down to earth after a mere nine steps. It left everybody baffled.

These were India’s immediate post-independence years. Athletics was still in its infancy. There were no clubs, no cinder tracks. The sport was played on hard, dry soil that wouldn’t nurture grass. Cast-iron shots, javelins, discuses were a wondrous legacy from the British. What to do with them? Throw them — yes, but how?

My mother was highly skilled at shotput. Her secret: the use of both hands.

The trainers at Queen Victoria Girls Inter College were old, retired teachers who relied on unorthodox methods. Jasleen Ahluwalia was trained by a woman who swore by the use of chilli peppers: red peppers for the sprint events, green peppers for longer distances. Some peppers were so fiery they could blast an elephant a metre into the air.

Jasleen once finished first in the 1,000 metres, but kept running after crossing the finish line, making straight for the toilets. Success depended on the right dosage.

Every season there’d be a contest with another school, which would see the best pupils come out to defend the honour of Queen Victoria Girls Inter College. Jasleen was always selected for the heptathlon. Not only could she run fast and throw far, but she could also jump very high — by Indian standards, anyway.

The Fosbury Flop hadn’t yet arrived on the high-jumping scene; it wouldn’t be invented until years later, and adopted in India many years after that. The back-first jump by Richard Douglas Fosbury at the 1968 Olympic Games was imitated by Indian athletes from the word go, but the technique led to countless injuries: head injuries, broken bones, and even the occasional spinal cord injury. It was a kamikaze jump, the Fosbury Flop.

Jasleen swore by the scissors jump. She’d take a seven-step run-up and then quickly step over the cord, first with her right leg, followed immediately by her left. It was by far the safest technique, given that you landed on your feet. Behind the cord was no squashy mat, but a pit with sand and grit. The high jump and long jump were done in the same place.

My mother had developed a jumping technique that saw her use the pole to which the cord was attached. She’d take a run-up at a gentle 20-degree angle, grab the pole, push off and pull herself across the cord. Sometimes this would result in disqualification, but usually not. The fact that pole-vaulting wasn’t a widely known event yet worked to her advantage. But I suspect she may have intimidated the officials as well. Being an official in India wasn’t a sinecure. Some athletes simply pushed down the cord as they jumped: women who’d later drive their husbands to distraction, and who, at a young age, had already mastered the art of always being right.

The school record was held by Jasleen. It was a height that equalled the length of her mother’s hair. Every season, she’d add two centimetres, and in summer, even four, because her mother’s hair grew faster at that time of year.

It was thanks to Jasleen’s exceptional achievements that Queen Victoria Girls Inter College beat practically every other school in the vicinity. Jasleen got to mount the podium in every region, probably experiencing the same sweet afternoons I was to savour later. The setting sun, the thirst, and the satisfaction: these were glory days.

Like my mother, Jasleen was selected for the individual district championships in Lucknow. Thanks to her flying start, my mother won the large trophy that’s now on her bedside cabinet. Jasleen won the heptathlon. The wind was just right, the peppers had been consumed in the correct dosage, and her mother’s hair had undergone a growth spurt.

The winners in Lucknow went on to the championships of the state of Uttar Pradesh. This is where my mother made three false starts. It didn’t stop her, though. She carried on sprinting and finished first, while the other athletes were still in the starting position. Never before had her headstart been this big. At the day’s end, it took eight officials to pull my mother off the podium.

Jasleen, on the other hand, was allowed to mount the podium. Having set a new points record, she would be going to the championships in the north of India, in Delhi. At this competition, two months later, all the men’s sprint events were won by Milkha Singh, The Flying Sikh. In Rome, in 1960, this prodigy would be the first Indian athlete to reach a final at the Olympic Games. He narrowly missed out on bronze in the 400 metres. But it was the closest an Indian athlete had ever come to winning a medal.

Jasleen won the heptathlon at the North Indian championships, and her name was plastered all over the papers. The press sang Jasleen’s praises, as they’d done Milkha Singh’s — with the same joy, the same big words: the nation’s track-and-field hopes.

But unlike Milkha Singh, Jasleen would never compete in the Olympics. Her parents insisted that she go to university. Studying was higher in the Indian pecking order than sport. ‘You’ll reap the benefits of a university degree for the rest of your life,’ her mother said. ‘A trophy will get dusty and lose its lustre.’

Jasleen listened to her mother and became a lung specialist. The discus would never again shoot out of her hand and climb higher and higher on the wind before falling back down to earth, notching up innumerable steps.

I met the same fate. After my school exams, I was expected to become an economist, a lawyer, or a doctor. If I did, everything would be all right. I listened to my mother and went on to study economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. But I soon got bored, and drifted off in the recesses of the mind. I was never to wake again.

The day I announced my intention of becoming a writer, my mother burned a black bin bag out on the patio — just as she’d done for Mr Gerritsen, the tenant in the attic on Jericholaan. I could hear my mother yell: ‘Be gone, spirit! Evil spirit of Ernest, be gone!’

She didn’t want to see me ever again. She was ashamed of a writer, and still is.

But this is no revenge.

I’d love to hear her shout again — ‘Jaldi! Jaldi!’ — and hear her voice ringing out across the grass, full of enthusiasm and jubilant happiness.

These days, I only hear it from afar, from the depths of a daydream.