Sat Mag
Rohit Navarajah: Silent running
By Uditha Devapriya
The Dornhorst Memorial Prize, the most sought after accolade at Royal College, is, curiously enough, named after an old boy who didn’t win a single award there.
Born in 1849, Frederick Dornhorst served as a Master at his school before embarking on a career as an Advocate and, later, a King’s Counsel. As a member of the middle-class Burgher elite, he was very much a product of his time.
In keeping with the custom of his milieu, Dornhorst gave back what he could to his school, at every possible opportunity. In 1922 he became the donor of the Lower School’s Reading Prize. A much bigger contribution followed his death six years later, when he left behind a legacy of Rs 2,500 – around three million today – “at the disposal of the Principal, for the award of an annual prize.” This was the Dornhorst Prize for General Merit, which, we are told, replaced an earlier award, the de Heer Memorial Prize.
To me the Prize is a symbol of just how elite schools in Sri Lanka have changed and just how they have not, a point I brought up in my essay on Blok and Dino to this paper not too long ago. This disjuncture, as it stands, isn’t obvious at first, but it comes out when you consider the criterion used to judge the nominees and the milieu of those who win it: a bilingual and intermediate class, far more representative of society today than they would have been in Dornhorst’s day. This year’s winner is no different.
Rohit Navarajah remembers the first time he ran a race. He was about six, and his father would take him out running every other day. The intention hadn’t been to mould him into a sportsman, much less an athlete, but to “make me fit.”
The Navarajahs were not from Colombo. Rohit’s father had attended school in Matale and moved to Badulla; coincidence brought them to the metropolis, first to Kotahena, then to Bambalapitiya, and finally to Kollupitiya. The shift to Colombo would have been intriguing for the father and mother, but for Rohit and his sister, it was a matter of blending in.
Part of that blending in involved Colombo’s sprawling sports metropolis. This Rohit revelled in, taking to it like a duck to water, so much so that after he entered Grade Two, his father hired a coach for him. “He felt I held some promise in me.”
Things moved fast thereafter. Rohit passed through Grade One and Two without incident, but after he entered Grade Three, he took part in that year’s sportsmeet, representing his House. He had come first at practice sessions. Naturally, hopes were high.
Disappointingly, however, he ended up eighth, which wasn’t so bad, except that he was also the last. It was then that Rohit resolved to improve, to “win it big.”
Time passed, and after a brief stint in Scouting, Rohit chose to abandon all other activities for track-and-field events. This led him to attend the AGM of the House Committee in 2012, the year he entered Sixth Grade.
Circumstances compelled the House Seniors, including that year’s Captain Dhanuja Gunasekara, to try him out. Coming in barely two years after his disastrous first encounter, Rohit endeavoured to give his best.
It worked. Seeing him sprint across the field, the seniors became convinced Rohit was their man: “They called me in for morning and evening practices, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.” Perfunctory though these practices may have been, they proved to be vital for him: “They helped me bring out my restless spirit.”
Discarding his old kit, Rohit’s father bought him accessories for the first time; he remembers the excitement of getting into the new attire even now. Getting from there to John Tarbat was easy; practicing for the latter, however, was not. To top everything, there was a language issue as well.
It took no less than six months for Rohit to master enough Sinhala to communicate with his coaches and colleagues, in time for the final encounter at Embilipitiya. Clocking in first in the first two rounds, he came third in the semi-finals and fifth (or sixth: he doesn’t remember) at the finals. It was the first time Rohit had been to a national competition. The experience was exhilarating.
Four months after John Tarbat, in June, he faced his first Relay Carnival at the Diyagama Stadium in Kahathuduwa, where his team broke ground and set new records. The leading athlete, Rohit remembers, had been from Maris Stella. “I was confident I could take him and his team on, so I asked him to run with us. He agreed, no doubt thinking he could upend us. In the end, however, we prevailed, and I clinched my first All-Island Gold Medal.”
Coupled with two concurrent victories at the National Athletics Championship organised by the Ceylonese Track and Field Club, and a tour to the National Institute of Sports in Patiala, India, these encounters opened up new horizons for Rohit. The following year brought with it newer encounters. At the Sugathadasa Stadium, Rohit faced his first Zonal and Provincial tournaments. There too he triumphed, if not conclusively then with enough dexterity to assure his team that he was yet to be reckoned with.
If injury didn’t quite dampen his winning streak, acts of god would: 2015 was his turn to captain the team for that year’s John Tarbat, yet right after the team arrived at the venue in Anuradhapura, “disaster struck in the form of a fever that spread everywhere.”
2016 and 2017 were busy years for Rohit: getting ready for O Levels meant not missing a single class. “I had the support of my class teacher, Mrs Vijayaratnam, who went out of her way to make sure I kept up with all my lessons.”
It was during these years when, spending his time away from sports, he realised that club and society work could be fulfilling too. He found his way to the school’s Tamil Dramatic Society, Hindu Students’ Union, and Tamil Literary Association, among other clubs. Yet he did not let go of his engagements on the field; he was recognised as a school Coloursman in 2016, 2017, and 2018, and a Western Province Athletics Coloursman in 2018.
Two years later, of course, Dornhorst happened.
Summing up all these accolades, Rohit is quiet and shy, a far cry from the barely concealed hubris most children with half his accomplishments project. “I can’t say I did everything alone,” he reflects. “No athlete can claim he or she does things alone.”
Public school prizes go a long way in establishing winners on the field. Yet – and this is my critique of those who win them – how many of those winners take their winning streak beyond schools and universities? Brawn, like brains, doesn’t just come out of thin air; as with academic prowess, it must be nurtured, fermented, and refined.
Today Rohit is engaged with his higher education – he chose Commerce for his A Levels last year – as he should. Yet going through his records – and there’s so many of them, too many to list down in this article – I wonder whether this will repress the athlete in him.
The Dornhorst triumph must then be seen, not as an end in itself, not as the beginning of the end, but as a means, and as an end to the beginning. As much as I hope Rohit – and all those sportsmen winning prizes for, and from, their schools – gets this message, I hope all those who’ve been a part of his life so far get it too.
The writer can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com