New Delhi: The Indian shooting fraternity woke up on Friday to the shocking news of Jaspal Rana’s demise. As his peers, friends, shooters and officials struggled to come to terms with the cruel and unexpected development, each one of them had a piece of Jaspal to share.
Memories that captured the exceptional career of a teenage prodigy who became a giant of Indian shooting, whose exploits on the international stage made the sport popular and gave shooters belief. But Jaspal was more than just a talent and a performer. He was an outspoken voice, a bundle of ideas, a provocateur, a prankster with a zest for life, and a mentor who dared others to dream big. It was difficult to box Jaspal Rana.
They would miss him. At the ranges, he pulled off his antics or challenged a youngster, walking with pride and swagger one moment and breaking into laughter the next. At selection meetings, making his opinions loud and clear, often opposite to what others thought. Jaspal could be the ‘troublemaker’ at one instance; a friend the next. A strong voice that could not be ignored because he trusted his instincts the way he trusted his pistol to fire perfect rounds.
Only 49, Jaspal was travelling with the Indian contingent in Munich as the pistol coach just 12 days ago when he fell ill. He felt uneasy during the flight back home and was admitted to the hospital upon his return on June 1.
Stents were inserted and he had “recovered significantly and was fit for discharge today (Friday).” However, “he unfortunately suffered a sudden cardiac rupture while asleep, which led to his demise.”
The body was taken to Dehradun where his family and Manu Bhaker, his most famous prodigy, were present.
“I want to remember him as a smiling, joyful, extremely positive person. As a human being, he was amazing,” says Joydeep Karmakar.
Once, Jaspal convinced the team to go out for a party that went past midnight even when a crucial domestic trial was on. Joydeep Karmakar recalls how the bunch of shooters, young and old, were invited by Jaspal and had to jump the hotel wall because the gates were closed. “We all went, had fun, food, songs, everything. We came back late and the doors were locked. We had to jump over the wall — all of us. I was also a little worried because I was new.”
Joydeep was not complaining as his match was over, but the interesting bit was that Jaspal himself had a match the next morning. “When I woke up, he had already shot a world record.”
Beijing Olympics champion Abhinav Bindra calls Jaspal one of his earliest inspirations. “When I first started shooting in 1996, Jaspal was already a star — a junior world champion from 1994.”
Bindra shared a room with Jaspal while travelling through Europe in 1999 and 2000 and recalls how those long training and competition hours were made comfortable by him. “Those were formative years for me. I was young, still finding my feet, still trying to understand what it meant to belong at that level. Jaspal had already achieved so much, but he never made me feel small. He encouraged me, motivated me, laughed with me and gave me confidence in ways he may never have fully realised.”
After his stellar career, Jaspal turned to coaching and there too he had his own methods. He and Deepali Deshpande laid a strong foundation for the national junior programme that the NRAI started in 2012. As a coach, Jaspal knew how to tap talent.
Deepali and Jaspal go a long way back to their junior days. “He was younger than me but he had started his career so early. There were so many tournaments we travelled to together — just three or four of us representing the Indian team — and there are so many memories.”
It was during the junior programme that Jaspal met Manu Bhaker and Saurabh Chaudhary and played a key role in shaping their careers. Despite his differences with Manu before the Tokyo Olympics, he came around when Manu called him before Paris, and the rest was history.
