The new air rifle also a Hammerli which arrived just before we were leaving for Japan and this gun turned out to be a different model altogether and a slightly more powerful and heavier air rifle than the one that I was used to shooting so far. All of this fazed my father more than me. I recall being fairly matter of fact about my shooting matches. I was handed the gun in question and performed as expected. In order to help me adjust to the new gun, my father requested the manager of the hotel if we could rig a small range in his dining room where I could practise in the afternoon. He was very accommodating and agreed to this rather strange request. Every afternoon once the service for lunch had ended, my father and Thakur Anand Singh who had accompanied us set up a small makeshift range in the room and I would shoot there for the next half hour or so.
It is only fair to point out at this stage that the air rifles that we used at that time were extremely primitive weapons compared to the high powered precision guns that are used today by Indian shooters such as Abhinav Bindra and Gagan Narang who are acclaimed Olympic medallists: they also have access to the very best shooting glasses and a whole lot of other equipments, compared to what we used to use it was almost equivalent to the stone ages.
As though that was not enough of a handicap, it turned out that I was short-sighted and needed prescription glasses. In addition to that I also have mild dyspraxia, which is a common form of developmental coordination disorder and manifests itself in many different ways. In most cases it is a slight difficulty in simple activities like tying shoe laces and following directions-right or left-and the most amusing of all, where it says pull or push on a door, if there was a third alternative with what to do with a door, I think I would forever be locked inside some space! One would suppose that not being able to clearly see the target and also have some issues with fine motor movements would be a definite handicap in shooting, but the astonishing fact was that since I was blissfully unaware of these conditions then, I carried on as normal and amazingly managed to do quite well. Once I was home, I was taken straight to the optician and he gave me contact lenses that I used to wear during the competitions from then on.
In his book ‘From Rome to Moscow’ my father recounted his observations about me:
‘One day I had walked into her room in Tokyo in 1967 and on her bed was a tiny toy teddy bear. She had not grown out of the childhood age fully, I realised. I wondered if it was right for me to put a 14- year child through such a tough competition’.
This, however, did not deter him in any way and I was put through many such competitions both at home and abroad with exactly the same discipline and zeal. My father’s recall of the event is clearer than mine so I quote directly from his book:
‘In Air Rifles, the first position went to Korea’s Namsang Wan, who shot 367; second place went to Republic of China’s Wu Tao Yuan with 366 and 3rd to Japan’s Ishii Takao with 364. However, if there was a ladies Air Rifle Team or a below 20 years junior item, I am sure, Rajyashree would have won the gold medal with her 342. As it was, she beat at least 11 of Asia’s picked men. What had gratified me most was that while she shot her matches I could not be with her as I was busy shooting my miserable last string of 18/25 18 miles away. Even then she was not disturbed being alone though my wife was around watching. Furthermore, this was her first contest abroad, and she was using her new air rifle she had finally decided to use the night previous only. Besides, dozens of photographers & TV cameras surrounded her just 5 feet away as she shot off in 40 minutes a full course for which 1½ hours were permitted. This called for sheer determination and she appeared to have it alright. I found she shared a characteristic with me: she shoots higher score in competition’.
After the competitions were over we had the march past organised according to the countries, and I recall that my father and I were the only two members of the Indian squad. My father always wore a dark navy blue blazer and an orange turban while I was dressed in a red sari with the navy blue blazer, which the Japanese media seemed to like very much. It was all good fun and we said goodbye to all our colleagues who had been a part of our day for the past week or so. The Japanese are not only extremely hospitable and courteous but also incredibly generous. One of my parent’s friends called Imani San who was a very wealthy Japanese businessman and was very interested in shooting, always gave expensive presents to my parents whenever he met them this time he gave my mother a beautiful leather handbag.
We spent a few days in Tokyo on our way back and this was the time to visit the famed department stores around the city. On one such shopping expedition, I noted that the salesgirls were looking at me and then talking among themselves. My curiosity piqued and I asked them what was so amusing to them about me, and finally they found a girl who spoke good English and she said to me that they were wondering that since I had such big eyes, did I have a problem with a strong glare from the sun? It was very funny and we all laughed and I explained to them that in India most women had large and beautiful eyes and we were no more subject to glare from sunshine than any of them. It was a wonderful experience which I will always treasure and I learned much even in that short trip which would stand me in good stead in the future.
In 1969 when I was about sixteen, the World Shooting Championships were to take place in San Sebastian, Spain. The national shooting championships were held that year in the charming city of Bhopal. The late Begum Sahiba of Bhopal allowed us to stay in one of their residences called Flagstaff House. One day she also invited us for a trip to their private hunting reserve called Chiklaud. It was an amazing experience, as it was a very serene and beautiful place and reminded me very much of our Gajner estate back home. Her Highness as I recall was an extremely striking lady with upright bearing, she remembered the good old days when Bhopal and Bikaner maintained extremely good relations and referred to my great grandfather Maharaja Ganga Singhji as “Uncle”, she was very charming and took the trouble of talking to me and putting me at my ease. We had a most enjoyable afternoon thanks to her warm hospitality.
The scores for both the men and the ladies event would be selected from that particular competition in Bhopal. Finally, it was the two father and daughter teams that were selected to represent India in Spain that year. My Uncle Maharao Bhim Singh of Kota and his daughter Princess Bhuvneshwari Kumari were selected as were my father and I. As usual, long practise rounds were shot at the Bikaner Thunderbolts range prior to our departure. Thakur Kalu Singhji was to accompany us as both coach and mechanic. By now I was shooting with my 12 Gauge Remington 1100 Automatic gun that my father had bought for me from the United States: this more powerful weapon naturally gave me more confidence.
My father wrote of our trip to the World Shooting Championships in San Sebastian, Spain:
‘Meanwhile 1962 also marked an important year in the life of Rajyashree, my daughter, who started shooting clay pigeon at the age of 9. She fired a double barrel side by side .410 shotgun to make a score of 3 out of 5 standing 7 yards behind the trap house. Little had we known that in a brief span of only 7 years Rajyashree would go on to finish 8th in the World in clay pigeon ladies event at San Sebastian (Spain) World Shooting Championship in October 1969 and would also get the Arjuna Award in Shooting which is the highest award in sport in our country. It was one more footstep by her in the right direction at a tender age, which was to bring her National recognition in the clay pigeon sport in the years to come and both National and International praise after her debut at Tokyo in 1967 and San Sebastian in 1969.’
Speaking of the .410 it was grandfather’s gun and I learned to shoot clay pigeons with it. What I was not ready for at the age of nine was the weight of the gun, so in order to help me out my father would stand alongside me and support the barrel that was the only way forward as otherwise I would have tipped over with the weight of the shotgun! There is a delightful photo of me with my father posing with a shotgun that was considerably taller than me in size!
The town of San Sebastian is a delightful one, si
tuated in the heart of Basque country; it is located on the northern coast of Spain and our hotel the Gudamendi was situated near the beach. In the evening when the tide was out, the beach was lit up and the young men of the town used to play volleyball there, it was all extremely picturesque. We first flew to Madrid where we spent a few days and then flew on to Bilbao from where it was a couple of hours’ drive to San Sebastian. My Kota cousin Princess Bhuvneshwari and my Uncle Maharao Bhim Singh were also staying at the same hotel, so it was quite cosy and nice to have some company in the evenings. We used to have our meals together and discuss the day’s events; mostly it was all about shooting and our scores for the day. Father was quite single minded in this respect and an in- depth post mortem of the day’s events was compulsory.
Princess Bhuvneshwari Kumari of Kota is the daughter of my great aunt Shiv Kanwar, Princess of Bikaner and the Maharani of Kota. She is my father’s first cousin, though there was a big age difference between them, she was closer in age to me and I ended up calling her Jija or elder sister rather than Bhua or paternal aunt. She was an extremely talented shooter and more importantly, had a calm and serene temperament which is always useful, especially during long tense days when one is being moved around from one range to another and shooting most of the day. The princely state of Kota from where she comes is both tiger and leopard country and in decades past Maharaja Ganga Singhji, my grandfather and father often visited Kota for big game hunting.
At one point of time, Princess Bhuvneshwari kept a baby leopard as a pet, her name was Sheba and she followed my aunt around like a little dog. I was of course very impressed since the best that I could do was a toy poodle and here was my aunt with her own pet leopard. I was beside myself with envy. Sheba stayed in Kota with her for many years and eventually grew a bit wild and it appears that she managed to tear a guest’s sari and this incident convinced them that it was not a good idea to keep a fully grown wild animal in a domestic environment. Eventually, my cousin had no option but to give her to the Delhi zoo, where I believe she visited her often. My aunt and I often shot together and spent quite a bit of time socially too.
Shooters from all around the world flocked to San Sebastian. My father introduced me to all his friends from the world of shooting, and I had never realised until then, how popular and well respected he was within the shooting fraternity. It was a great privilege to meet lady champions such as the attractive blonde Gulrasina of Russia and the sturdy, dark-haired Nuria from Mexico; it was clearly going to be a very tough competition, since in the ladies event I was the youngest participant. Kuku Jija and I were both shooting traps as was Gulrasina and many others. Nuria was a skeet shooter. It was also there that I met Susan Natress, a young Canadian, who was more or less the same age as me, but she was of sturdy build and shot with a 12 Gauge over under shotgun unlike my automatic gun and I believe a heavier calibre of shell. She was also accompanied by both her parents just as I was. Susan had a great sense of humour and kept us laughing with her endless jokes and chatter as we patiently waited our turn at the various ranges.
In San Sebastian there were three ranges: A, B and C. The C range was particularly difficult; it was perched atop a steep cliff. Strong winds blew all around most of the time and in some cases it was so bad that the target actually arched and flew over the hapless shooter, and at other times the high winds gusted and buffeted the clay target so erratically that it was impossible to hit it. Needless to say, it was collectively our least favourite range but since we had to shoot at all three in rotation there was no way of avoiding it. As though that was not bad enough, there was some fog that rolled down from time to time, to make matters worse, and although the setting was extremely picturesque, the conditions were the most difficult that I have ever encountered. Nonetheless, we persevered and all things considered, did not do all that badly. Therefore some praise from my father in his book was very welcome under the circumstances:
‘My daughter Rajyashree Kumari, the youngest on the ranges, shot practice scores of 22, 21 and 19 out of 25 and surprised me, amongst others, no end. In a special match called the Castillo-de-Chinchon, she got a third position made in the ladies event which now finds a place of pride in her collection of medals, both national and international’.
In the end, despite all the excitement and difficulty and considering that fact that I was the youngest in the ladies group I finished eighth, which is not bad in my reckoning: eighth in the world at sixteen was quite a satisfying achievement.
My father continues:
‘We now knew that the two girls would have to be ‘nursed’ to get high scores which could have been well beyond their capability, through courage and morale boosting, and it worked out well, Thank God. Bhuvaneshwari, who was our No. 1 in India amongst ladies at that time and elder in age to Rajyashree by 8 years, was one point behind Rajyashree shot 71 out of 100 and Bhuvaneshwari 70 out of 100. The first 100 were taken for Master Shooter’s Badges but this time due to extremely difficult conditions arbitrary standards were set i.e. first ten to get gold for men and first two positions for gold badges for ladies and next two for silver for ladies and so on. Rajyashree was fourth at this stage amongst ladies and amongst those who had entered for the badge match in the ladies event, so she was awarded the Silver Badge. Both were excellent scores, more so, under these trying conditions. Rajyashree was 6th in the over-all competition on the first 100 targets and Bhuvaneshwari 8th’.
None of our trips abroad could be described as uneventful by any stretch of the imagination. We were like a jinxed family and something would always happen to make things even more dramatic than they really were. One evening when my father and I returned to the hotel, we were met in the lobby by a group of concerned guests and the hotel manager. My mother it appeared had been taken ill, and my father tried to ascertain from my mother exactly what the problem was. It seemed that she had lost her speech and was naturally very panicked and upset about this. My father phoned several doctors in London who wanted to know what medication she might have been on. It then transpired that some tablets that she had taken had produced this effect and fortunately for all concerned, it was temporary and wore off the next morning and she was alright again. While it lasted it was quite, scary both for her and all of us.
When the matches were over and the prizes distributed there was an evening gala dinner for all the participants. I was sitting on a different table to my parents; in the typical European style, there were several different wines that were being served with the various courses at the table. Almost sixteen years of age and curious to know what wine tasted like, I took a couple of sips out of curiosity. When my mother found out about this she went ballistic and was furious with me because as far as my mother is concerned, alcohol of any kind is the invention of the devil and we were not supposed to touch a drop of it. In fact, it was not till much later after I was married and living in London that I started to have the occasional glass of wine and even that was a terrible crime as far as my parents were concerned.
Our visit to Spain had been an exciting one and we enjoyed the hospitality of the Spanish Shooting Federation and the strong camaraderie that existed between all the shooters there. Susan Nattress went on to be an international clay pigeon champion. Daughter of Floyd Nattrass, she too was taught to shoot by her father from an early age like me. She participated in six Olympic Games- one of the sixteen shooters to do so and won a silver medal in 2001 at the Cairo shooting championships. I will always look back fondly on the time we spent together that year: she was certainly an inspiration.
The Asian shooting Championship in 1972 was to be held in Seoul, South Korea. Once again, it was the two father and daughter pairs of Bikaner and Kota who had been selected. However, this time we also had Kanwar Man Singh who was part of our team. My father did not believe in travelling light: just about everything barring the kitchen sink, travelled with him. One of the largest pieces of baggage accompanying us was his medicine chest in which he had everything that he
could possibly need in case he or anyone of us became ill. While we were waiting at the baggage carousel we suddenly noticed packets of medicines and blister packs slowly bobbing and wending their way together with the luggage. It turned out that my father’s medicine chest had burst its clasp somewhere along the way and was steadily spilling its contents on the conveyer belt. We hurriedly gathered them together and tucked them away just in time for the Indian Ambassador who had come personally to greet the Indian team. My father was an M.P of the Lok Sabha at the time and he was given priority treatment by the Indian Embassy
We stayed at a lovely hotel in the centre of the city called Chosan. Besides shooting there was really not much to do in the city; as shopping at the time was virtually non-existent, their biggest single selling item was the ginseng root, and one could find it in every form from the whole root to the tablets and powders. Ginseng is one of Korea’s biggest exports. In shops there are large jars with the whole root displayed for sale. Ginseng is considered beneficial for many illnesses such as blood pressure and immunity boosting. Though there is very little scientific evidence, it is nonetheless extremely popular and is used all over the world for medicinal purposes.
Palace of Clouds Page 26