Published in feverpitch.in (http://tinyurl.com/93jput2)
Fittest Bollywood star, international Rugby player, and sport enthusiast, Rahul Bose was right here at the Garden City as a chief guest for the second Parikrama Champions League.
We caught up with Rahul while he was witnessing the finals at the Bangalore Football Stadium. He talked about how sport is a reason to be successful in academics and his experience playing with Rudd Gullit.
GCSStars: What’s the closest connection you have with football, have you played at any level?
Rahul Bose: no, nothing, football is perhaps my worst sport in that respect. I’ve boxed at the under-19 zonal-level and won a silver, in athletics, I was the individual champion at school, in cricket, reached at a decent level, played for Bombay Gymkhana A team under the tutelage of late MAK Pataudi there, and in rugby, off-course everybody know, I’ve played for India.
We never had a good football coach at school, primarily, and secondly, football was not that popular in Mumbai before EPL televised in India. All said, I did play the beautiful game for my school, kept goal for my school at my height! (grins)
However, these days I do play a lot of football, especially in exhibition and charity matches.
GCSStars: Please share your experience playing with Ruud Gullit?
Rahul Bose: Ohh, I must tell you this - my experience while playing in Paljor Stadium, Gangtok, with legendary Rudd Gullit, Baichung and co., also, this happens to be my toughest game.
It was a different game, they were playing another level of football altogether! I could run, but I had no idea about the pattern they were playing. For some time the crowd laughed at me, later I did couple of good things, so they stopped laughing, and I realized that it is better to go off the field when the crowd stopped laughing.
So, after good 25 minutes I substituted myself.
GCSStars: So what brings you here, you do a lot of sports-related activities?
Rahul Bose: Parikrama is one of the better NGO’s we have in our country. The work they do with the kids, in terms with their education, regardless of boys or girls, religion, caste, and their emphasis on their stress on three sporting discipline – football, athletics, and taekwondo. They’re quite serious about what they are doing.
For me it is a win-win situation to come down here, because something what the parents need to realize that how much sport helps studies.
Let’s say parents think sport is a luxury, which again is a bitter truth amongst most parents. Even it is, and let us think academic is the most important thing in life. Sport taught me how to concentrate longer, discipline, organized, hardworking. Apparently, these are the qualities all you need before an exam, and it really helped my studies!
So, coming down in support for an organization that does foundational work with children and understand the goodness of sports is what one need.
GCSStars: Rahul we’ve seen you to be one of the fittest personalities in Bollywood. So how serious is Bollywood about sport?
Rahul Bose: Increasingly more so, but not enough. You have Shahrukh (Khan), John (Abraham), who are out there and even Salman (Khan) taking part. There is a new football team coming up. Ranbir (Kapoor) is quite serious, Dino (Morea) is a good footballer. But not to that extent, guess the new mantra is that Bollywood would really come up and do it for soccer.
