Vishesh Code to Win breaks ground for Indian basketball by bringing an inspirational story home

A book’s journey – from being just a thought in the author’s mind to becoming available to the reader – can make for a fascinating study. And, Vishesh Code to Win, Nirupma Yadav’s biography of the youngest man to captain the India basketball team Vishesh Briguvanshi, scores high on that front as well as for being perhaps the first on an Indian hoopster.

The book is a labour of love, meeting its simple aim of telling Vishesh’s inspirational story and drawing lessons from his rise from obscurity in Varanasi to the national team. The story-telling is lucidly dealt, though you could be left wishing for better editing, and the lessons at the end of each chapter will appeal especially to the younger reader.

A little bit about some of the legends of Indian basketball woven into the story would have lent some muscle to the book, more so since there is not much Indian literature on the sport and its players. Despite that, the book achieves the twin objectives of drawing attention to a fine exponent of a lesser-played Olympic sport and sharing life lessons.

It is quite ironic that such a positive book is the outcome of a rather negative scenario. Dark thoughts twirled in  Nirupma Yadav’s mind during the early weeks of the long lockdown in the wake of the Corona outbreak. She recalls tottering on the brink, considering taking an extreme step and hesitating only because of her three-year-old son Atharva Yadav.

“I realised I should not succumb to the negativity swirling around me when my friend, Sara Khan, launched her fourth book – Top 10 Secrets to Writing a Book Successfully – on Kindle. She was my friend from my days in the Aligarh Muslim University and, fortunately, I could draw from her on every step of this journey,” Nirupma says, conversing inside a car to avoid public spaces.

“I had to do this for my son and myself. And get out of the quagmire of a difficult marriage. I had the unflinching support of my parents. My father Subhash Yadav who is a physical education teacher in an inter college in my hometown, Moradabad, stood by me like a rock and gave me the freedom to make my decisions,” she says.

She set off writing a  book on Prof. Rajiv Chauhdary who taught her when she was completing her Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education from the Banaras Hindu University. “I had been deeply impacted by Prof. Chaudhary and I learnt a lot from him about life and respecting others. And I wanted to write a book on him as my Guru Dakshina,” she says.

“I had recorded at least 20 hours of interviews with him for the purpose when I started interacting with Vibhor Briguvanshi and discovered that his brother Vishesh’s application for the Arjuna Awards was being made for some years in a row but had not been lucky enough to get nominated by the selection committees,” Nirupma recalls.

“It started with my asking him to become socially active and create greater awareness about Vishesh. Vibhor sir asked me what I could do to help and that is how the idea of this book came about. I requested Prof. Chaudhary to allow me to defer my book on him so that I could write a book on Vishesh that could be released in August,” she says. And as his luck would have it, Vishesh who has played the 2010 and 2014 Asian Games, was nominated for the Arjuna Award in 2020.

Nirupma Yadav says the book, published by BlueRose Publishers, is a result of 40 hours of interviews with Vishesh and his circle of coaches, team-mates and family. “I was prepared to meet an arrogant person, but his first words bowled me over when he called me the first time. ‘Pranam didi, charan sparsh,’ he said, respectfully. Through the book, I discovered a brother, having lost mine to an accident,” she says.

“I would have liked some of his coaches to be a bit more open about Vishesh as much as his team-mates were, but I learnt that each person is different. I also wish I could have written a bit more about his attachment with his son, especially his role in helping Vishesh recover from a low phase following an injury,” Nirupma Yadav says.

“I have not written this for money (the book is priced at Rs. 499). My only gain will be the respect that the readers will have and the positive image that it will create in their minds as a writer. I used to be worried about the negative tags, but this book erased those thoughts. It was a tough time for everyone during lockdown and I am grateful to life for the opportunity to be creative and productive,” she says.

As we draw to the close of our conversation, Nirupma reveals that she loves meeting people who are on top of their respective fields, understanding them and writing about them. “I guess this stems from my MBA in Human Resources. I have gained confidence in the process of writing and I do not think I will shed tears again. Nobody can make me cry anymore,” she says.