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Rio 2016 Olympics: Family of shooters look to Heena Sidhu to bring Olympic medal

Heena Sidhu's home has weapons and sporting silverware dominate a living room that waits for its first Olympic medal.

heena sidhu, heena sidhu india, heena sidhu shooting, india shooting, olympics shooting, rio 2016, rio 2016 olympics, olympics 2016, omypics news Heena Sidhu (C) will be competing in the 10m Air Pistol event at the Rio Olympics. (Source: Amit Chakravarty)

Young, curious, with interests outside her sport, Heena Sidhu married into a family of shooters — father-in-law is a multiple Commonwealth Games champion while a gold-medalist husband coaches her now. Shahid Judge visits the home where weapons and sporting silverware dominate a living room that waits for its first Olympic medal

The first thing you’d notice when you step into the Pandit household living room is a set of shotguns. Near the door, suspended on the wall, is a polished wooden cabinet that houses over two dozen medals — but the guns overshadows everything else. The wandering gaze of new visitors to the home would invariably be dominated by the cabinet, and its contents. But that’s only when Heena Sidhu is not around.

Sitting on a coffee table in the far corner of the room is a vase holding up a bouquet of white carnations. The arrangement isn’t exactly the first thing one notices, but Heena ensures you don’t miss the freshly cut flowers. Apart from her own medals, the floral arrangement is one of the first few changes the 26-year-old has managed to bring to the living room — one she’d often term as ‘overly masculine’. “This house has a lot of male characteristics. There were no flowers, no pictures. Ronak desperately needed a sister,” she laments. “I brought all these flowers.”

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Ironically, in the family of professional shooters that has won almost everything there is to offer in the sport, be it the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, or even World Cups, the newest entrant Heena is the family’s last hope of winning the missing piece of metal — an Olympic medal.

It’s been three years since Heena moved into Gajanan Bhavan — the Pandit bungalow in Mumbai. In February 2013 the shooter married into a family that already had a firm lineage in the sport. Her husband Ronak, who is now her coach, won gold at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Ronak’s father Ashok is a multiple-time Commonwealth Games champion, and was the first in the Pandit household to get into shooting as a sport. Just like Heena, the father-son duo specialised in pistol shooting.

Festive offer

From an early age, Heena too has been in close contact with guns and ammunition. “My Chacha (uncle) has a business in guns. I used to watch him repair and customise guns, so I was exposed to them from a very young age. That’s how I eventually started shooting,” she says, adding further that she’s the only one from her family to have stuck to sport shooting as a profession.

The shift to Mumbai to a family of shooters offered a familiar sense of comfort but it came with other little problems. In airports, for starters. With the trips between Mumbai and her native village in Patiala getting more frequent, the weapons in her luggage elicited varied reactions at the airport security. It’s common for shooters to face the wrath of the often confused, and usually panic-stricken, airport officials when they reveal the weapons in their baggage even if all the required documents are in order. Yet at the Chandigarh airport, Heena has often breezed through.

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It’s a fascinating cultural difference to guns, within the country. Punjab is gripped by a gun culture — lakhs of legal gun licenses, over 1000 arms dealers, and second only next to Uttar Pradesh in the number of gun owners. Enough to worry the likes of cricketer Harbhajan Singh who has tweeted in the past about the negative influence of Punjabi songs that glorify gun violence.

“In Punjab, people are very accepting towards guns,” Heena says. “Most families have a gun or two. Even people in villages have shotguns. So at Chandigarh airport, the official I’m dealing with is often straight forward because that person might just have a gun at home,” she explains.

Mumbai isn’t gun-crazy, and the airport officials still double-take at gun sightings. “But here, in Mumbai, having an arms license itself is a big thing, even if it is for sport. So we’d get asked a hundred questions at the airport. ‘Kyun ja rahe ho, kya zaroorat hai, kitne ki aati hai, hum touch karke dekh sakte hai…’” she lists. Of late, though, she doesn’t worry much because Ronak jumps in to handle the paperwork and explanations.

***

Coming from what she calls a ‘semi-shooting family’ into a thorough shooting family has had its own share of changes, especially when it came to dinner time conversations. Given her own family’s business in guns, talk generally dominated the nature of weapons themselves when she’s in Patiala. In Mumbai though, it’s all about shooting. “Everyone here is an expert,” she says, laughing. “I have to filter out a lot of advice. My father-in-law’s style is different than mine. Even Ronak’s is different, but he’s the coach so he understands that.”

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An introvert, by her own admission, the 10m air pistol world record holder has a wide interest outside her sport. She has a degree in dentistry. “I’m not really a shooter at heart. What I like about the sport is the science behind it. It’s all maths and physics. Then there’s psychology. That’s what fascinates me.” At her home in Patiala, her father and uncle have started making wine. Heena has picked that up too. “My latest hobby,” she says.

Ashok is the most obsessed with the sport in the family, and understands the pressure on a Olympic-bound sportsperson. Ever since Heena married into the family, she has been left free to train without any distractions of any work at home. “As bahu, you might be expected to help with ghar ka kaam because you’re the manager of the house. But Heena can’t take that responsibility. She’s a star and an achiever, and she has to achieve much more. So if someone at home gets upset because of it, it’s fine. But Heena must not be upset,” Ashok says. “By disturbing her, you’re doing something against the nation because it is the country who is supporting her for the Olympics,” he adds.
There are vested interests however, in Ashok’s efforts to keep his daughter-in-law away from house work. In her pursuit to make the house more presentable – or less masculine as she terms it– the former world number one in 10 metre air pistol wants to set up a trophy room to display the medals of Ashok, Ronak and her own. The problem is that the room Heena has chosen serves as Ashok’s office currently.

Tall aluminium cupboards deck the fringes of the office. In the centre are two large desks placed parallel to each other – both littered with documents. The one closest to the window that overlooks the bungalow’s front gate is Ashok’s, and the 63-year-old often lounges on the comfortable high-backed chair behind his desk. Together with his brother, Ashok looks after the family’s real estate and construction business that they inherited from their father, from that office room itself. The construction business was in full bloom not long ago – the colony they live in is called Gajanan Colony.

But Heena has her eyes firmly set on that very location. She wants that room. “They keep saying, ‘haan 10-15 minutes main kar lenge.’ After 10-15 days, nothing changes,” she quips.

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She’s also taken up a stand for the women at home. Before her arrival, Heena’s mother-in-law and Ashok’s brother’s wife were outnumbered by their husbands and their sons. Now, Heena takes up the trio’s causes with zest. “Heena is a modern girl. So my sister-in-law and I have given her command. Sometimes when we ask the men for something, they get lazy and don’t do it. So then we tell Heena and she fights with them,” says Meenakshi Pandit, Heena’s mother-in-law, laughing at the thought.

“But the men are clever. They know that I’ll be travelling in a few days,” Heena says. “Haan main haan milayenge, (they will say yes, yes), I’ll leave, and that’s the end of it. They take advantage of my travelling a lot.”

There is a lot of banter that does the rounds, and Heena is often the subject of Ashok’s leg-pulling. “She’s fond of her Chacha. He’s an excellent gunsman. So I keep teasing her by saying that he’s number one in terms of guns, but I’m number one in terms of shooting,” he chuckles.

It isn’t a one-way street though. When Ashok talks about being among the first to win gold medals for the country, Heena has her reply sorted. “I say, ‘tabhi scores kya hoti thi, aur abhi dekho scores kya hai.’ (Compare the scores from then and now). He keeps quite then,” she says. “Just for a while though,” she adds.

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There is an obvious appreciation for Ashok’s antics. “There’s never a serious conversation with him. Kuch bhi ulta seedha bolenge. But that actually keeps the mind fresh because it changes the topic and gets rid of any seriousness,” she says.

Ronak too doesn’t get spared from Heena’s sharp wit during training sessions. “When he starts getting a bit too bossy, I tell him, “don’t forget, I shoot better than you’,” she says, smiling brightly.

***

Being a part of a family of professional shooters has certainly increased the level of sport related talk. Ashok asserts that most of the time it’s essentially only about rule changes. Nonetheless, to those oblivious to the art of shooting, a relatively mundane topic for the athletes will be incomprehensible for the outsider.

On one occasion, the family were out at dinner with close friends. It wasn’t necessarily an unusual feat since the Pandits and their friends often dined together. Yet halfway through this particular meal, Ashok remembers being cut mid-sentence. “My friend’s wife stopped me. She said, ‘do you realise, we’ve known you for the past 25 years. And you’re always talking about the same old thing. Don’t you get tired?’” he narrates.

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He recalls another incident where he got pulled up by his friends. “Ashok, kya bakwaas hai ye sab. Just pick up a gun, aim and fire. Waise bhi kaagaz pe goli maarte ho (What nonsense… you fire your bullets at a paper anyways),” the veteran imitates his friend’s scolding. “Well, in a way, he wasn’t exactly wrong,” he adds laughing.

At home, Ashok’s wife Meenakshi is someone who isn’t too savvy with the sport. She sits intently on the sofa as Ronak, Ashok, and Heena discuss guns, training methods and upcoming tournaments. Her face creases into a smile during phases in conversation she understands, followed by periods of blankness. She busies herself playing the caring host. When it comes to Heena’s preparation for the Olympics, or any other tournament for that matter, Meenakshi understands how limited her contribution towards helping her daughter-in-law can be. “I only understand the gravity of a tournament based on how Ashok, Ronak or Heena talk before a tournament. But I always wish her the best. I don’t know much of the sport, but my wishes are always with her and all I can give her,” Meenakshi mentions.

Heena too knows and appreciates her mother-in-law’s contribution, though limited. “We like to talk a lot about upcoming movies and plays, and even new restaurants,” Heena says as Meenakshi nods in the background.

In a way, her conversations with Meenakshi provides her the outlet she often craves. Apart from her other interests, she’s also tried her hand at art, and also, to Ashok’s dismay, at interior designing. Her first project, she hopes, will be turning the office into a trophy room. “That plan is still a plan,” she asserts.

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Among the trio of professional shooters at home though, Heena claims it is only Ashok who is obsessed with the sport. “He’s crazy for shooting. Crazy for guns. It takes a lot of craziness in your head to travel and shoot for so long, like he has done,” she says. “Main to kab ki chod deti (I would have left it a long while back).” Still, in the here and now, she is completely focused on her sporting goals, chuffed that her family has ensured her the freedom to train.
That trophy room can perhaps be kickstarted if she can get an Olympic medal but in the meanwhile she is content with smaller successes at home. One change she’s somewhat managed is get her husband Ronak to pick up after himself. She recalls how, when she first entered the Pandit residence, she spent the entire day cleaning up Ronak’s room. “He’d throw his stuff around and say ‘chalta hai,’” she says, smiling.

“I scold him a lot. All the time actually. But he’s improving.”

First uploaded on: 29-07-2016 at 06:21 IST
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