Lefty was Ameya Chandravakar and he came from Mumbai, back then called Bombay. Lefty was one of the best U14 players in India and was developing well in the team. He was also well liked at the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Scheme (BAT) and made everyone laugh with his wit and sleepy laidback nature.
The BAT team often traveled within India to tournaments. Sometimes we traveled with the entire team of 8 players which meant that both BAT coaches would go with them. This would mean separate wake up times, separate practice times, quite a logistical exercise. Usually in the morning one coach would take boys who had early matches to warm-up, while the other coach would take the remaining boys at a later time.
One such trip was to New Delhi. We always stayed in the cheapest hotels, sometimes 4 players to each room. On this trip to Delhi we had found a hotel with rooms on the roof, literally on the roof! There were two such rooms and we squeezed 8 players and two coaches into these two “rooms”.
I stayed in one of the rooms with “Lefty”, Sharad Kohli and Chanderveer Singh. I gave the boys the beds and I slept on the floor. Late that night I woke up with a strange feeling. I wasn’t feeling well and my head was spinning. I propped myself up on my elbows to better assess my condition, we were eating food prepared in some dodgy kitchens so this was not that uncommon. My head and body were moving like I was onboard a boat, I was in bad shape! As I sat there in the darkness I suddenly realized I was feeling fine, but why was the room moving? Then it dawned on me, it was an earthquake, and a big one! Worst of all we were at the top of a flimsy Indian building involving god knows how many construction short cuts! I needed to wake the boys and get them downstairs quickly.
First I woke Lefty, shook his feet and said “Get up, it’s an earthquake”. Sharad and Chanderveer were out of bed virtually as I was rushing out the door to wake the 2nd room. I knocked at the door of the second room and it opened quickly, some of the other boys had felt the tremor also. Soon we had everyone outside on the rooftop. I did a quick head count, one player was missing – lefty! I rushed back to the first room and there he was, fast asleep. I shook him again and said “Lefty get up!” to which he mumbled under the blankets “I’ll go with the next group Sir”. Lefty thought it was simply time for practice but it was 3am in the morning. “Earthquake Lefty, Earthquake!”. What happened next was surreal. Lefty sat up in the bed with an all knowing look on his face and said “I thought I felt an earthquake Sir”. That was lefty, earthquakes were dangerous things but sleep was more important!
Later we were all assembled down stairs on the roadside, including Lefty. We waited for about 30 minutes to see if the quake would return. Sometimes the most destructive earthquakes are preceded by a smaller one, so we had to make sure the danger had past. If a bigger quake was to follow the last place we wanted to be was on top of this flimsy Delhi building. Luckily for us there were no more earthquakes and we were able to safely return to bed.
That was lefty’s brush with death. He would have slept through anything nature could muster and not known anything about it!
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