One can sense the dedication of anxious cyclists. Sweating , pedalling on the rollers, eagerly waiting for their respective events. Strolling on the greens, surrounding the cycling velodrome at the Laxmibai National Institute of Physical Education (LNIPE) in Sonapur, the venue of the ongoing 74th Senior National Track championships.
In one corner, a lady, in her early 30s sits on a chair. She is flanked by two carefree youngsters soaking in the winter sun. They are scrolling through their mobile phones before ending up with a few video calls, and selfies, with the action in the background.
A glance at the duo is reciprocated by a passing smile before both get up and rub off the dust from their tracks and forward their hands with a “Hello sir, aap kaise ho?” After the customary exchange of handshakes, the duo said in unison, “Apna event khatam ho gaya sir (Our events are over)”
The two polite kids are representing Arunachal Pradesh: Ginjing Tari is 12, Pisa Yagu is 13. While Tari finished 26th, Yagu ended up 27th out of 33 contestants for the Under-14 championships. Their coach deemed their performances decent, considering they trained only for over a month at the Maxwell Trevor Cycling Academy in Hyderabad, one of India’s best training facilities for the sport.
As the conversations around their performances went on, Tari offered his brand new FUJI track bike to this correspondent for a ride before Yagu joined in to try her DOLAN bike.
Pisa Yagu hails from the remote Sarli village in the Kurung Kumey district, located along the Indo-China border, and named after Kurung and Kumey, two rivers, which flow into the mighty Brahmaputra. The district headquarter of Koloriang is situated around 260 km from the state capital of Itanagar, and for Yagu, it usually takes more than 17 hours to reach her village.
Born to Pisa Niglar, a watchman at the local high school in Sarli, Yagu is the penultimate child among six siblings of their first mother Pisa Yaju, who works at the local farm. Niglar’s eldest son is the school headmaster, while one of his daughters teaches in the same school. Niglar has another six children from his second wife.
“Baba subah jaake school kholte hai, fir saaf-safai karte hai, uske baad bhaiya, didi aur baki 7-8 teachers pahuchte hai (My father leaves for the school quite early in the morning, he then takes care of the cleaning, gardening, and other chores before being joined by the teachers and the students),” she narrates, while describing how her mother named her Yagu, meaning ‘intelligent’ in Bangru language as she was born in the wee hours before sunrise.
Yagu can boast of the biggest family (of 19 members, including the eldest brother’s family of four) in the village, and a factor that makes their house a priority destination for local politicians during campaigning.
“Most politicians from across parties make sure to drop at our place first during poll campaigning, thanks to the number of voters in the house. Our house count includes helpers from nearby villages. (From the discussions among the elders in the family) one can figure out that those helpers also convince their families to vote for a certain party,” she says.
But despite tall promises from the political class, their village still lacks the basic infrastructure, including health services and road connectivity. Except for the government-run BSNL towers with the sporadic network, mobile connectivity from private carriers are still a dream for the villagers. Power outages are frequent, affecting the mobile towers. Road connectivity is a nightmare during the monsoon season.
“Due to the poor condition of the roads, mostly during monsoons, the electric poles fall off or sometimes trees fall off. During that time, we have to wait for weeks to get power resumed,” she said.
Her village lacks basic healthcare facilitiesm and residents visit district headquarter Koloriang for treatment. “There’s only a couple of pharmacies in the village. For hospital treatment, one has to travel three-four hours to reach the hospital at Koloriang. It is difficult,” she added.
Young Yagu left her village about four years ago to stay with her eldest sister’s family in Itanagar. There, she got hooked to mountaineering after being admitted to a school. She soon came in contact with legendary mountaineer Taka Tamut, also the secretary of the Arunachal Cycling Association. A gold medal coupled with two silvers in three mountaineering disciplines at an event in Manipur last year got her closer to the sport. But the lack of a proper mountaineering facility back home held her back.
Then came the MTB Tawang cycling meet, where she showed her promise with a borrowed cycle and was soon spotted by Taka and representatives from the Cycling Federation of India. In October this year, she landed at the Maxwell Trevor Cycling Academy in Hyderabad.
“When she landed at the airport, I went to receive her and got her straight into the hostel. I was sceptical if she would stay for more than a day because communication was the most difficult thing for us. On the first day of training, she came empty-handed. This was understandable as she didn’t have a cycle, but she didn’t even have the tracks and shoes for training. When I asked her, she had one answer, ‘pata nehi’, and from that day onwards, we nicknamed her ‘Yagu Pata nehi’…,” Maxwell said.
“The second thing that was difficult was the food, but she adjusted to it. And she has improved a lot after getting the feel of the training regime at the academy,” he added.
Yagu now owns a track bike, which cost her Rs 3.28 lakh, sponsored by her elder brother and brother-in-law. While she’s getting homesick and eager to show her prized possession to her near ones, she has decided to return to Hyderabad to prepare for the upcoming National Road Cycling championships in January.
Yagu now harbours dreams of becoming a national champion in the next couple of years, and eventually wants to represent India one day at the Olympics to put her nondescript village on the global map.