Pan Singh Tomar

I decided to leave half of India-Pakistan match in Asia cup to go for Pan Singh Tomar. It proved out to be a good decision as India bowled poorly for the first half of the match. For the first time, I went to see a movie alone. The plan to watch it with friends did not work. Plans often fails, planning is overrated. By the time I went for it everyone has watched it or did not want to see it. I could not resist the interesting things I was hearing about it. In fact, I feared that they might stop showing it as it was already more than two weeks old. Fortunately it was running successfully just like Pan Singh Tomar ran successfully for steeple chase. As usual I did not read any reviews but I cannot prevent myself to hear that it was the story of a national record holder in athletics who becomes a rebel (baghi) in Chambal. Fascinating and intriguing. I was a bit hesitant to say 'one' when at the ticket counter I was asked, "How many tickets of Pan Singh Tomar?". But once I was inside, I don't know how time went by?. The only thing I didn't like in those two and a half hours was the trailer of Houseful-2 in the intermission.

It was a brilliant movie. True stories are brilliant. True stories are about life and life is not only interesting but uncertain too. Else we might get bored living just fifty years of life. The uncertainty in life of Pan Singh Tomar was crafted in this movie. I wanted to see more of sports in the movie. I wanted to see more about how Pan Singh prepared, struggled and won or lose. Perhaps, the limitations of a movie. But it was fine. His transformation into a rebel was sad enough to move you. The transformation was not sudden, it was gradual.  In some way I can relate the story to the lifestyle of my village. In villages it is not very easy to do something irregular. There are enough traditional roadblocks, jealously and feudal reasons to poke you if you decide to do something unconventional . Pan Singh Tomar was called 'Bhagoda' by his cousin, making fun of his talent and ability to run. The feudal wars about land runs deep in families. I have witnessed several such stories which ended not so happily in my village. In one such case a person was shoot at when he came back to meet his sister by his cousins and uncles. Pan Singh Tomar was all genuine. It was also nice to see glimpses of my alma mater in the movie.

I conveniently call myself a sports lover but I had never heard about Pan Singh Tomar until I saw this movie. It made me realized how limited is our exposure to sports in India. The one aspect where diversity of India loses is richness is its sports. Cricket is uniform all over our geography. It sounds cliche and unfair to say in India cricket takes the center stage in sports but it is true. Still we cannot blame cricket. We need stories of our great sportsman in Schools to inspire the kids. True stories inspires you.

We are not a sports crazy nation. We need to be! 

We run to reduce effects of our diet on our body. He ran to placate his voracious diet. That was Paan Singh Tomar.