A Pretty Sharp Shooter

OFFHOURS

One-time model Feroze Gujral is hardly someone one would associate with guns. But as we drive to Top Gun, a newly opened indoor shooting range in New Delhi, she not only talks the part but looks the part as well, with her sporty black jacket and a pair of skinny jeans. Says Gujral with a hint of excitement in her voice, "I have grown up with this sport. My grandfather used to go on shikar so he used to shoot. We used to have guns in the house. I also have lots of friends who are well-known shooters." The home environment being what it was, Gujral says that by the age of 10 she had started shooting sporadically. Despite that early interest, Gujral has never trained professionally in this sport. Her enthusiasm for the sport is such that on this day as we talk (Gujral refuses to sit down for a chat, preferring to stand), she has brought along her daughter and her daughter's friend. The girls get started with their guns, a take-off probably from the early initiation that Gujral too had in this sport.

Without bringing in gender stereotypes, I am still mystified as to why a pretty-looking woman would be interested in a sport that can have the connotations of being rough and brutish. Says Gujral: "I find shooting very calming. It's very meditative." Comparing shooting to golf, she says, "In golf you aren't playing against anyone. Here too, you aren't competing against anyone but yourself and the fact that you are trying to get that little dot that is in front of you." The golf comparison is something that Gujral sticks to pretty much throughout our conversation. She goes on, "Shooting is not a reactive sport. And you can't blame anyone but yourself if you don't do well. You can't say that the weather wasn't right or use any other excuse that one can give in other sports. And that's true in golf as well. Shooting is a skill sport."

But shooting, guns and the potentially horrible consequences of it all refuse to settle down quietly in my mind. I push the point once again "" about guns and the ugliness of it all "" and Gujral defends the sport well. She says, "Anything can have a negative connotation. Right now the five luxury sports include shooting and the reason for that is clear. This is a mind sport and its not about brute strength." One look at Gujral's young daughter wielding a gun with her slim arms and you know for sure that this is definitely not a sport where brute strength is the minimum requirement.

According to Gujral, shooting requires high fitness levels and, ideally, before starting to shoot, an hour of exercise is required. She says, "You need about two hours to be able to shoot. The first hour should be to exercise and then the next hour for shooting. In that way shooting isn't a quick sport, that you walk in and walk out in half an hour." She adds, "You have to be very fit to be a shooter. Actually, make that you have to be physically and mentally fit. When you hold a gun in your hands you need to be able to focus completely." Then there is the matter of technique as well, which too needs a shooter to be fit. Says Gujral, "For instance, if you shoot with your right arm, that does get tired after a while so you have to balance your left arm as well."

Gujral's interest in shooting hasn't meant that she has neglected other sports. She says, "Sports are an essential part of my life. I have played squash, tennis at some point. Though now I don't play tennis, I do watch all the big tournaments. I think that there isn't a sport that I can't play." Her "sporty" gene, she says, comes from her parents. Her father is very sporty and then boarding school with excellent sporting facilities meant that Gujral tried her hand at various sports. Now, she says, she ensures that her children (a son and a daughter) spend a lot of their free time involved in some sporting activity or other. Her children, for instance, often get sent to skiing camp in Switzerland. But Gujral rues that Indians, despite newfound riches, don't have a sporting culture and this being even more true of Indian women, even modern Indian women.

Gujral's sporting genes are now getting a little impatient and she says that she needs to get some shooting done before the shooting range closes for the day. As a parting shot (unintended pun) she says, "Shooting is the only sport where we have an Olympic silver medal in recent times." We part, Gujral takes to her guns, probably safer with them than I who has to take to the capital's killer roads. We both, though, live to tell this tale.