MARTYRED MAJOR | Always A Winner

It was the start of the highly-anticipated and much-hyped, glamour track event of the annual school sports day the 100-metre final. It was to take place in the far corner of the sports field. Smartly dressed staff and students and parents, who could manage to take time off from work or home, had gathered there. Most parents sat in the sprawling shade of the shamiana, fanning themselves with the programme flyer.Then the marquee event of the annual sports was about to start. Almost immediately a great hush fell over the ground. The sprinters in the six lanes crouched, muscles taut, perspiration on brow, waiting to synchronise their forward thrust with the starter's gun. The hot favourite for the race was the head boy. A six-footer popular both on and off the sports field.
Now, as the afternoon sun came blazing down on the ground, students in house colours, who had been flitting in and out of the white-chalk marked sports ground, paused and waited. The stern principal, sitting grandly in a blazer and tie, spotted the head boy's mother making her way towards the pavilion. Thanking her for taking time off for the sports, the principal whispered to her, "Would you please give out the first prize to the winner of the 100's?" The unsuspecting mother graciously accepted the honour not for a minute knowing the surprise planned. Just then the starter's gun resonated in the far corner of the ground. Crows leapt out of treetops. With a kick, the runners sped down the marked tracks, pumping arms and legs in a flurry of aesthetical grace and awesome force. Screams, boisterous cheering from the sidelines rent the air. Seconds later, in a dramatic, thrilling finish, the head boy was beaten by a whisker, by his junior. As an upshot the head boy's mother put the gold medal around the neck of the smiling winner on the victory stand and congratulated him and then smiled at the runner-up with "Hi there, son. You did a great job!" Remembering the Bangalore school event of that distant day, some 15 years ago, the head boy, now a techie in San Francisco, says, "I remember the winner clearly very good looking, always smiling, great all-rounder, exceedingly affable, the guy who pipped me at the winning post. Always a winner, that Sandeep Unnikrishnan."