Who told Makhan Singh to run? Why didn't he finish college, find a job, raise his kids, watch television?
Which world was he living in that he believed a gold and a silver at an Asian Games (1962) would make him a hero forever?
Understand why this is being said. Look there at that dishevelled cripple with the artificial leg, at that stationery shop on the Chandigarh-Hoshiarpur highway, that's Makhan. Yes, once he ran like the wind. Once. Now he drinks up a storm.
Most nights he downs his bottle of rum, hoping the alcohol will mute his pain. Instead it stirs his melancholy. He weeps, he shouts: "Keep this Arjuna Award away from my eyes." This morning, he hops around the room placing small utensils on the floor to catch the rain that is seeping through his roof. He is not poor, this man; he is belittled.
This year he went to the Rail Bhavan in Delhi to get a complimentary railway pass that Arjuna awardees are entitled to. He couldn't get past the reception. The staff sniggered. Asian gold medallists don't walk around on crutches, they said. "They thought I was a beggar," says Makhan. It took two hours before the man who beat Milkha Singh by two yards in the 400 m in 1964 in Calcutta was recognised.
Milkha beat him to gold at the 1962 Asian Games, but they won gold collectively in the relay. Then life went bad. He drove a truck, lost his leg, chased politicians for a gas agency outlet without success. When he pleaded with a Punjab MP for assistance two years ago, the man asked for Rs 5 lakh.
Now Makhan asks himself: who told you to run?
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