Archer Parvin Jadhav aiming for more

In his teens, Parvin Jadhav often accompanied his father, Ramesh, a daily wage farm labourer, to work in the fields. An eight-hour shift would get them a measly ~200.

“I didn’t get any money but I was like a helping hand,” Jadhav says. “Sometimes I carried fertiliser to spray in the fields so that my father could finish his work as early as possible.”

Working in the harsh conditions in farms around the sugar town of Phaltan in Satara district, Maharashtra, with the temperature hovering over 40 degrees in summers, Jadhav says, made him tough. It was this grit that he mined when he stepped on the field of play ten years later, during the June 10-16 World Archery Championships in Hertogenbosch, Netherlands.

Jadhav, 23, the youngest of the three member national men’s recurve team—Tarundeep Rai and Atanu Das are the other two—won the 2020 Tokyo Olympic berth and also a team silver.

Camping here at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium to prepare for their next big tournament, the World Cup Stage 4 at Berlin (from July 1), Jadhav says that he firmly believes in a higher power at work.

“Working with my father during my childhood was a blessing in disguise,” he says. “There is some external force on this planet that helps when you are struggling.”

Perhaps it was this force, Jadhav says, that helped him overcome a difficult situation at the World Championships. The army archer usually makes it a point to call his parents once a day when he is outside the country for a competition; it helps him stay focused. But a week before he was scheduled to shoot at the most important competition of the season, he found himself unable to get through to his parents. It continued through the week.

“I was very worried why there was no response,” he says. “I was brooding, I felt lonely. But then I realised I should first concentrate on the task at hand and stay focused. I tricked my mind into believing that all is good back home, and then I was able to concentrate,” he added.

Later, when the tournament was over, he came to know that a rain back home had disrupted the electricity supply to his village for a week, and his father’s phone had also been damaged.

“I came to know through my friend that all is good at home, and I was happy,” he said.

blessing in disguise

Jadhav’s introduction to archery also came on the back of adversity; yet another incident he can call ‘a blessing in disguise’.

“ I was planning to quit school after my seventh class as there was no money,” he says. “Then a teacher at my school advised me to try for Krida Prabodhini, a state run residential programme for young talent in sports, and there I could get free education and food as well.”

Jadhav was inspired by the idea, and because he had run in U-14 track races in school, he gave trials for 400m, and was selected.

“It was the turning point in my life,” he says. Two years into the project, he was making no headway on the track. One day, intrigued by the prospect of shooting an arrow, he went over to the archery range and tried his hand. The archery coach at the centre was on hand, and was surprised to find a young boy who had never held a bow before hitting the target. He encouraged Jadhav to switch to archery, and it immediately paid off.

In his first year of training, he went on to win two silver medals at the National School Games.

“That made me happy,” Jadhav says. “I started enjoying my training.”

But there was something that made Jadhav happier—that he was getting a chance to finish school. Even though his training began to take up more and more time, he graduated and began attending college.

In archery, his big break came in 2015 when he won a bronze on his international debut at Asia Cup at Bangkok, Thailand.

At this time, he was still using borrowed equipment; it was only a year later, when he began to perform at world cups, that a cash prize from the state allowed him to buy his own bow.

“That was the first thing I did with my first prize money,” he says.

In 2017, he landed a job with the army via sports quota, and with this income he helped his father move away from daily labour.

“I got dairy cattle so that he could sell milk,” Jadhav says. In March this year Jadhav battled it out with the country’s top archers to win individual gold during the national championships at Cuttack, Odisha.

The next stop is to stay focused for Tokyo.

“I have missed my third year exams for my under graduation course to compete at the World Championships,” he says. “It’s sometimes difficult to strike a balance. But God wants me to win medals.”

First Published: Jun 22, 2019 21:13 IST