Sanchin, and Gin and Tonics

 February 13, 2022

I want to write about today. But it feels like ‘so much’ in just one day that I don’t know if I can. 

 

This afternoon I sat and watched myself, watch four of my students – can I call them that – do dan gradings with Sensei Mistry online. 

 

I don’t know where to begin to express the myriad emotions I have been through in the day. 

 

It began on the first Sunday of 2022. No, it began in 2003. Or perhaps in 2014?

 

Phew! Deep breath. Let’s just start with sanchin, and gin and tonics…

 

It began this week. It all started to feel unreal and scary then. Sensei Mistry sent me the theory paper for the four who had been training with him on Sundays in January. I told him I was as nervous as them. An online dan grading—a first for our dojo.  And then there was this thing — that I didn’t quite identify as a teacher who could mentor her students towards dan gradings. I didn’t say that to him, but perhaps I didn’t have to. I had been his student, still was, and he knew me well, like i know my students perhaps. He said, Radhika relax, do sanchin and have a gin and tonic on me. 

 

But I am an imposter. Still swimming in this space of go-ju karate, struggling to find my identity and I mean not as a teacher but just a karateka. A person who Sensei Mistry had, rightly, not graded to her first stripe till she had been training for eight months — when most got it in three. 

 

Back to that time when Sensei Pete left Singapore. Back to trying to keep the dojo going when the other black belt quit training. Back to the year on Fort Canning Hill training with just two others, brown belts at that time. 2014 that was. 

 

Fast forward to today. I wanted to train too. I said I’d keep my camera off. But Sensei Mistry reminded me that I was their Sensei, and I should sit this one out. I should also get a grading sheet and make notes. Which I did. But like I said I was watching myself, watching the grading. 

 

And watch them I did from the edge of my seat. 

 

This week has been rich with memory. Of my first years in karate with Sensei Mistry. Of my first years in teaching these four. Particularly two who entered our dojo as white belts. I remembered the first contact, the first email, the first phone call, the first months with them. 

 

And the months of Sunday practice with them last year. Their efforts to grasp something intangible that the imperfect, inadequate me was trying to convey. I still can’t believe they trusted me — that I could lead them on this journey. 

 

But I think they got it. At least the first steps. They found their way for sure. And yes, they all passed and the Singy IOGKF dojo has three new shodans and one new nidan. I couldn’t be prouder. I broke into tears after Sensei announced the results.

 

A day of rest and reflection for me — with a vodka neat (as I had run out of gin). Perhaps a bit longer for them. But next weekend we will be back in the dojo trying to dig deeper —  into skill, technique, into form, and essence, of this amazing path. Where I am, maybe we all are, discovering more than just karate. Where we find ourselves in vivid, clear moments that may again be lost.

Am I too foolish to write about self-doubt?