Govindpura, a village 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from Muzaffargarh city in Punjab Province, British India (now Kot Adu district, Pakistan) is the birthplace of Indian track and field sprinter Milkha Singh. He was orphaned and he witnessed the killings of his parents, a brother and two sisters during the Partition. Thereafter at the age of 18, he escaped to Delhi, India where Singh lived for a short time with the family of his married sister but unluckily he was briefly imprisoned at Tihar jail for travelling on a train without a ticket. Later, he was released with the help of his sister. From staying at refugee camp in Purana Qila and at a resettlement colony in Shahdara, Delhi, to becoming dacoit, Milkha’s life was shattered and clueless until he joined Indian Army. During his time in the Indian Army, Singh discovered his love for running. The Indian soldiers had to undertake a five-mile cross-country run, from where the top ten were selected for further training. Singh has acknowledged the army for introducing him to sport, saying that “I came from a remote village, I didn’t know what running was, or the Olympics”.
‘I had a fire inside….’
Initially, Milkha Singh was unfamiliar with what actually running spikes were or what a tracksuit was, but he always believed that he had something that could neither be bought nor taught and so he used to say, “Aag thah andar (I had a fire inside),”...Through times, with hardwork, dedication and perseverance he learned to fuel the said ‘fire’. He refined his own training methods after getting inspired by American athlete Charles Jenkins .He also took inspiration from an Urdu couplet: “Mita de apni hasti ko agar his martaba chahe, ki dana khak may mil kar gul-e-gulzar hota hai (Destroy your entire existence if you want to reach the zenith, because a seed has to become one with the dust to sprout the blossom into a flower).”
His major achievements -feather of his cap
Milkha Singh was a four-time Asian Games gold medallist, India’s first Commonwealth Games gold medallist and national record holder for over 40 years. He was the first Indian to win a gold at the Commonwealth Games in 1958 and later it took India 52 years to again win a gold medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. He was honoured with Padma Shri in the year 1959 and in 2016 he received Bharat Gaurav Award.
The moniker, Flying Sikh
The moniker Flying Sikh, which Singh happily embraced, was given to him by. In 1960, Milkha Singh went to Lahore to take part in a 200-metre event on special invitation from the Pakistani government. Initially he was hesitant to go to Pakistan since it brought back memories of Partition and the untimely death of his parents in the carnage that followed. But later, then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru personally convinced him that Milkha agreed to accept the invitation from Pakistan. The former Pakistan president, General Ayub Khan gave him the moniker Flying Sikh after seeing Singh race against Pakistan’s star athlete and national hero, Abdul Khaliq. The General Ayub Khan said, “Milkha ji, you didn’t run in Pakistan, you flew. We would like to give you the title of Flying Sikh..” and thus Singh happily embraced the said moniker.
Unfortunately Singh died on 18 June 2021 at 11:30 pm in Chandigarh after getting admitted to Fortis Hospital in Mohali on 24 May 2021 with pneumonia caused by COVID-19 . His wife, Nirmal Saini, had died a few days earlier, also due to COVID-19.
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