With maximum spirit

It's past 8 p.m. on a busy Thursday evening in South Mumbai. Hailing a cab was not the easiest thing to do. But we found one - a shiny black and yellow Santro.

Closing the boot was a young man in track pants and T-shirt. Even as we wondered if the vehicle was his, he asked us where we needed to go. Having courteously asked us to sit inside, Radeshyam D. Jaiswar put on a white shirt and took the driver's seat. We were on our way to Bandra.

On being asked if he was a sportsman, our ‘taxi driver' disclosed that he had just finished giving a private yoga lesson to a client in South Mumbai. He visits the civil servant twice a week.

“Yoga, did you say?” we asked. A pamphlet detailing services on offer at ‘Soul Shakti Yoga' was handed to us. Yoga, weight loss, athletic and strength training, and a few more things were on the list. Home lessons were part of the business, we were told.

From another collateral (a business card), we found that a ‘National Athlete, Gold Medalist' was driving us home. As we were to discover in the course of the journey, Jaiswar's story is one of yet another enterprising entrepreneur in maximum city, and more.

Going for gold

Jaiswar's parents had moved from Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai much before his birth. Aged 13, he was at a sports camp in Aurangabad sponsored by the Maharashtra Government, as a student of the Ganpatrao Kadam Municipal High school in Lower Parel.

Many races, medals and even more days in training later, he struck gold at a national-level meet as part of a 4 x 100 metres relay team in 2002. His best time to date on record, for 100 metres, is 11.05 seconds.

A politician sponsored his training after the gold medal winning effort. The training continued for a while, but age caught up with him before he could attain his dream of running for India. By 2004, he realised that would remain a dream. His hamstring wouldn't give the ‘lift' it used to. He nevertheless kept running - and training. It is that training that led him to becoming an entrepreneur.

“I used to train at the Mahalaxmi Race Course. There are several people who come there early in the morning, and I used to give tips to some of them. Over time, I realised that many of them wanted to learn to train the right way, be it for professional (sport or athletics) or fitness reasons. That's when I started training them professionally,” recalls Jaiswar.

Scaling up

A majority of the ‘business' now comes from the fitness-seeking Mumbaikars. At a rented Podar Jumbo Kids campus in Worli, batches of people come for ‘Soul Shakti' yoga training at different time slots in the morning and evening. He has six assistants - three male and three female. The ‘business' of training is three years old.

There are other training sessions – martial arts near Haji Ali, athletics at Priyadarshini Park, and home training for fitness improvement and yoga. The word has spread. At the Podar campus, each person pays Rs 1,000 a month for three one-hour sessions a week.

“The Podar campus is very small; so each batch can handle only 15 people. At Race Course, at one point the batch strength went up to 75 people, and there were issues because commercial training is not allowed there. Hopefully, we should get larger premises for yoga training soon, to accommodate more people,” explains Jaiswar.

At 25, he landed a ‘contract' job with Western Railways, something that came his way for his athletic abilities. That was around the time he got married, four months ago.

A taxi to the Olympics

With so much action on the training business front, why the taxi-driving, we wondered.

“I never stopped training. I drove a taxi for a living sometimes between 2005 and 2009, when training was only for me (and not a business). Now this (taxi) is only to take me to my training sessions. And if I get a passenger en route (which I do often), it's good. I'm paying Rs 9,100 per month as EMI for this car,” explains Jaiswar.

There are six taxis at his home. His late father used to drive one. Now his four chachas and ‘almost retired' grandfather do.

Jaiswar has to go to sleep by 10 p.m., and hit training at Mahalaxmi Race Course early in the morning. His day begins at 4 a.m. And, whether or not he gets a passenger at that time, he will get to training. This session is extra-special to this Mumbaikar.

He doesn't charge a fee from those coming to him for professional athletics training.

These are the youngsters nurturing dreams of winning an Olympic medal for the country one day. Through them, his Olympic dream is still alive. That fire is still burning.

“ Josh abhi bhi hai,” says Jaiswar. It's hard not to believe him.

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