Behind the suicide of a rowing champ

Julie Verghese vividly remembers that overcast October day in 2002 at the Nakdong River in Busan, South Korea. They were paddling out to the...

Julie Verghese vividly remembers that overcast October day in 2002 at the Nakdong River in Busan, South Korea. They were paddling out to the start of the women’s pair-oars-with-coxswain final of the 14th Asian Games. ‘‘To say that I was nervous is a gross understatement,’’ she says, what with the crowds, the choppers overhead, the launches packed with camera crews — all this after months of training on deserted lakes.

But her partner, Shobini Rajan, kept tapping her on her thigh and giving her the thumbs-up sign. Soon enough, Verghese too was raring to go. ‘‘That is one thing about rowing: you learn to be strong as you go along and, more importantly, to lend that strength to others,’’ she explains.

Which is why she was devastated when she heard yesterday that her partner and friend had taken her own life. Tired of beseeching bureaucrats for a long-overdue government job, her farmer father’s finances depleted after marrying off his other daughter, Rajan, just 23 and winner of over 30 medals in national and international rowing events, committed suicide, just a stone’s throw away from the very backwaters where she was first drawn to this sport.

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‘‘What compounded Shobini’s problem was a chronic back ailment, which, if not treated in time, was potentially career-threatening. That is where a job or the Rs 2.5 lakh due to her from the sports council would have decisively helped. But it was simply not to be,’’ says Dr Rajiv, a sports psychologist and consultant for Sports Authority of India (SAI).

Rajan grew up in Kuttanadu, a region that daily re-enacts the marriage of land with water. This is probably the only place where paddy thrives a good ten feet below sea level. An elaborate system of dykes and ditches keeps the sea away, a tribute to the cultivators’ ingenuity.

Children here learn to swim as soon as they have learnt to walk. At Kavalam, Kannadi or Kaipuzha, travellers can sight infants and toddlers afloat in small bamboo baskets — a sort of backwater perambulator — as their mothers attend to household chores or are busy at the waterlogged farms. An ideal place indeed to nurture an international aquatic sports star.

Yet, as Ratheesh Dominic, Rajan’s neighbour and once an aspiring rower, revealed, when she first voiced this intent her father needed a leap of faith to hear her out. ‘‘Forget a career in sports, very few girls had left this place, a half-hour drive from Alappuzha, except to get married,’’ says Dominic. But Shobini didn’t want to be yet another girl with slouching shoulders and eyes that rarely look up.

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Her unquestionable talent finally convinced all. Soon she was competing at the state level and winning cash awards. With this came the few signs of prosperity in her hitherto indigent home: a refrigerator, a ceramic tea-set, a concrete roof and a marble portico.

Her best was yet to come, avers Dr Rajiv, who often watched her practice at the SAI’s Alappuzha centre. She had performed well at recent trails and had been selected to represent Kerala in the Pune open-rowing championship in February next year. ‘‘She was a natural who, like all good rowers, was, in the heat of battle, able to clear her mind and fall back on her training,’’ he says.

‘‘It’s a wake-up call for many of us, the threat of serious injury and the total lack of support,’’ feels Verghese, and adds plaintively, ‘‘Both the government and the private sector should come forward with some blueprint to see that Shobini’s fate is not repeated.’’

Is someone listening?