Day 23 of 27 — Camp

July 13, 2021

Every July or August the dojo organised a four-day camp in Lonavla. Seniors began encouraging juniors to sign up, but everyone left me alone. I’d only been there two weeks, and many thought I wouldn’t last long. The physical pace was still tough for me, and I was pathetic when it came to executing attack-defence combinations. Partner training left me petrified, not of being hurt but of letting my partner down and not being able to provide a decent training experience for him or her.  Often, I was left partnerless till Sensei Mistry assigned me one. 

 

One evening after class a new senior black belt, Sensei N, appeared after class. Many seemed to know who he was—someone who had trained with Sensei Mistry at the beginnings of his own karate journey. He asked everyone to sit down and spoke about the benefits of camp—how immersing the self in karate for four days would help the learning process. I knew the truth of this from my experiences while learning traditional Indian music when I’d come away from a weekend at the gurukul with a leap in understanding. Sensei N asked those who were going to raise their hands. A part of me did want to go but most of me was chicken, and of course I didn’t raise mine. 

 

He looked around the seated karatekas and for some reason his eyes settled on me, in the last row. ‘Why aren’t you going?’

‘Erm… I just joined two weeks ago,’ I stammered.

‘You are scared,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I agreed, and I heard some sniggers.

He nodded gently. ‘But your soul is calling you to camp.’ 

 

I was stunned. I have no clue why he said that, but I knew it was true and at the next class I handed in my registration form for camp. As I paid the fees to Sensei H, who was organising the camp, one of the brown belts said, ‘You are coming?’ Later during the 8:30pm break he came to me and said, ‘Radhika, don’t worry. We all go together, and we will look out for you.’ 

 

I was touched by his warmth and sure enough at camp he and several young higher kyu grades grabbed my arm and pulled me out when I felt I was drowning. It was my first experience of the karate community spirit, a feeling sense which has grown over the years. 

 

Despite, being reassured by the brown belt I still was terrified of going. I talked to others who had been to camps, mostly to find out how tiring it was. They told me some unbelievable stories of the physical training—like carrying heavy potato sacks up and down a hill or a thousand repetitions of a kata. Later some confessed that they had exaggerated just to scare me. Yet, when the day came to leave, I was terrified and almost wished myself ill so I could drop out. But I was on the bus to the camp the afternoon of that last Thursday in August. I was quiet, sitting on the edge of the rowdy crowd and listening to their excitement. 

 

The camp was held in a school in Lonavla with boarding facilities. It was a picturesque location with hills, lush and green with monsoon water, on all sides and a soft mist hanging low over the imposing four or five storey stone building. The school was on vacation, and we took it over for the next four days. The men stayed in the boys’ dormitories on the first level of the main building while the women, and the Senseis, in an annexe where the teachers usually lived. There were eight women stuffed into two tiny rooms—no floor space after fours beds were shoved into each room, which normally held one. The two rooms shared one narrow primitive bathroom. Of course, there was no hot water, and the sink was so tiny that most of the water cascaded out when one was washing. We had barely claimed our beds when there was a knock on the door and one of the Sensei’s yelled, ‘In your gi’s and on the grounds in ten minutes.’

 

I’d never done karate in the open and it was exhilarating. I found a part of myself flying free from the heavy pull of gravity on my body. It began to pour around the end of the training, but we kept on with our basics for another fifteen minutes. The rain was freezing, and I was glad to get back to the little room, get into dry clothes and go down to the cafeteria for some piping hot tea.

 

Later we had dinner, a theory session, and a short training at 10 pm. And my first day at camp ended.