Run! For your future

She can run. He can coach.

So, Jayant Tandekar opened his two-room rented home and took her under his wing.

Tandekar is trying to live his dream through the eight-year-old Urvashi, his protégé.

This is the story of a rural child, her parents, and a young athletics coach trying to dream big; low on money but high on resolve.

Two years ago, Urvashi Nimbarte was eight when she came to Tandekar. He lives in a small rented house on the outskirts of Bhandara city, and she moved into his home with all her belongings; he is now her mother and father. Urvashi’s parents have no money. They are small farmers in Dawwa village, about 25 kilometres from Bhandara city. But the young girl’s mother Madhuri felt if her daughter had to have a chance to become something, she had to trust this young man and his dreams for her daughter.

The slimly-built, gutsy Madhuri’s aim is to raise her children to do something meaningful in their lives. Urvashi’s father, her husband farms and also doubles up as a daily wage labourer in small industry close by.

"If she lived with us, she would be like me in another 10 years – married and raising kids, working on farms, and then dying one day," the mother tells PARI, sitting beside her husband and her father-in-law in their two-room house in Dawwa. "I could not bear to see that happening to her," she says.

Urvashi addresses Tandekar as ‘mama’, meaning maternal uncle. The coach was around 35 years old and unmarried when he took charge of the young athlete.

Tandekar is a Dalit, a Chambhar by caste, and smitten by an urge to produce good athletes from rural areas in Bhandara, Gondia and Gadchiroli districts. He wants to give these young people something he did not get – a chance to fly on the tracks.

Urvashi is a Kunbi (OBC) by caste and yet, her parents felt they needed to defy both: caste hierarchy and the patriarchal noose. Speaking to PARI on a summer morning in 2024 at Bhandara's Shivaji Stadium, Tandekar says that Urvashi is a special kid.

In Bhandara, he runs an academy aptly christened Anath Pindak – saviour of the orphaned. To fund his nearly 50 pupils of all ages, he raises money through small donations, barely managing the show. A short man with a round face and sharp, doting eyes, tells his aspiring rural runners to never fear failure or setback.

Every morning, he brings Urvashi to the ground and trains her early before the other children join in. She has to undergo her regular drills, he says.

A young Urvashi, clad in her track suit, is a different soul on the track, bubbly, raring to run, and slog hard, guided by her mentor and mama. Urvashi has a long way to go: she has begun to compete in school athletics competitions; then Tandekar will put her in the district events, aiming to make it to the state and nationals.

Tandekar thinks the rural children must get into the race, whatever it takes. He tells them stories of some of India’s runners to inspire them from examples like P.T. Usha and others who made it big despite the odds. His pupils think they too can make it big if they work hard and dream big.

Learning from his own journey, Tandekar focuses on her diet and nutrition, something as basic as milk and eggs that he never got to eat regularly. Urvashi's diet, he ensures, has proteins, carbohydrates and fats. His sister, who lives in Bhandara, brings fish, available there in season. Urvashi’s mother regularly drops by to check on her daughter and help her with her school and regular chores.

The coach makes sure that his mentee has good shoes, something he never had growing up. His dad, he says, was a landless labourer, hardly ever able to make ends meet. And he drank excessively, spending his meagre earnings on a bottle every day. There were days, he recounts, when he and his sibling went hungry.

“I dreamt of running on the track,” he says in a sarcastic vein, a small smile hiding his frustration. “I had no chance."

But if Urvashi and the likes have to get that chance, Tandekar knows he has to do everything in his command to get them healthy food, footwear, and access to the big league.

That, he says, means they have to get into good schools and compete hard.

That also includes getting good healthcare whenever needed - an ankle sprain, a stiff muscle, exhaustion, or growth spurts.

“It’s hard,” he says, “but at least I will have taught my students how to dream big.”