Amrith Gopinath’s debut novel The Prodigal Sprinter is a novel as interesting as its name. Not only is it a remarkable narrative of what it means to be a young sportsperson in India, but it is also a tale that is bound to speak to anyone who has struggled with the pressure of expectations. Bringing to the forefront a protagonist who is made all the more believable simply because he is so human, Gopinath explores the nuances of ambition and failure in this work, focussing not only on the athletic prowess of its protagonist but also on his journey. Ultimately, The Prodigal Sprinter is a powerful reminder that the race to success is often won from within.

A t2 chat with the author:

The Prodigal Sprinter highlights a variety of themes, from sport to the greater human experience such as struggling with fame and expectations. What made you want to tell a story like this?

Sports has always been an integral part of my life and growing up, I was involved in some sporting activity or the other. I’ve seen how the Indian sporting system, especially when I was growing up, really wasn’t the best in terms of nurturing athletes, and athletes who came up in the system did so despite the system, and not because of it. So for me, a lot of those memories remain and I’ve seen India now blossom into a better sporting country, but I sense that the stories of athletes especially in non-mainstream sports like cricket, which always gets a lot of money and a lot of attention, even today, get ignored. So I wanted to highlight the struggles and aspirations of athletes who do non-mainstream sports and how they serve the country and come through in the field. That’s the whole motivation of bringing the story to light.

Your protagonist, Sachin, goes through a fabulous character arc. He’s a sportsperson but also a mere teenager who’s still trying to find his footing in the world. What did you enjoy writing most about his character?

A lot of people have given me the feedback that he’s a very frustrating protagonist! You want to root for him but he frustrates you with his inability to handle anger; you want him to succeed but then you’re like, “Why is he behaving like this?!” I believe human tendency is generally flawed, and for sportspeople, we see a certain persona of them, and think they’re really perfect individuals in how they live their lives, but human behaviour is not like that. We are all deeply flawed individuals, including the sportspeople we tend to look up to. So I wanted to have a protagonist who’s flawed, who’s not someone you can easily root for, who’s not black-and-white, where it’ll not be very easy for the reader to say that they want this person to succeed. That’s why I wanted the reader to have those moments of doubt, to empathise with him, get frustrated with him, hate him, and like him in the same story arc. There are lots of shades of grey in his character.

Besides, I feel there a lot of promising sports prodigies who have not made it as big in life. You see a lot of promising tennis stars and athletes who at the school level are told they are going to make it, and then life takes a hard toll on them and they’re not able to shine on the field. For every Roger Federer, there are thousands of tennis guys who are eking out a living on the sidelines. So this story is a reflection of those unpraised athletes who haven’t made it to the world stage but still love sports and continue to do their sport. So for me, it was important to bring that aspect out.

You’ve given us quite a detailed glimpse into the life of a sportsperson. How much of that was based on personal knowledge, or did you have to refer to particular case points?

I’ve been an athlete most of my life and I used to play badminton and cricket and football in school so I was trained with certain people, but I also follow sports keenly and I’ve read a lot of sporting biographies. And now with Netflix, you see so many documentaries on sports lives. You can actually find out more about athletes’ lives so you see how they train and the level of sophistication with which they pursue their goals. So it was an assimilation of my own experiences as a child growing up and also later developments, such as autobiographies and stories I’ve read, to bring that depth of training and sporting knowledge to the story.

The narrative touches upon life on both personal and professional fronts. How did you balance the narrative to keep it engaging yet emotionally resonant?

The broad story arc was in my mind. I listed down the names of the characters and the people who would be part of an ecosystem of a person’s life, and what their characteristics would generally be, their quirks and features. And then I wrote down a chapter heading, like a progression of this person’s journey from childhood to adulthood and these are the few milestones that would be there in an athlete’s life and the broad or mean milestones or traumatic incidents that would define him during this period, then I let it flow as a process, kept writing and building it and things kept changing in the process. So what I had initially planned were a few things I dropped and then I added a few things, so it’s structured in the beginning and developed a lot of fluidity as I was writing it.

If there was one thing you would like readers to take away from the book, what would it be and why?

I’d like readers to inculcate sport in their lives. Whether it’s at a personal level or professional level, sport is an amazing teacher of life. I’ve learned most of my lessons on the field. If you’re into sports and you pursue it even as a hobby, just to get you a bit of competitiveness, it’ll teach you a lot.