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Bill Clinton honours Martial Art exponent

Vinod Behl in Delhi

His peers include Arnold Schwarzenneger, Don Wilson and Eric Lee -- the cream of Hollywood's martial arts crop.

His credits include black belts in Tae Kwon Do and Karate.

And his list of admirers include US President Bill Clinton who, on the recommendation of Master Yankee Choi, chief Tae Kwan Do coach in the US and a film star in his own right, picked him for the Presidential Council on Physical Fitness.

He is Sanjay Chauhan, of Gurgaon, all of 23 and the fastest rising star in the martial arts firmament.

For Sanjay, however, all this recognition pales beside his self-imposed mission of promoting martial arts among the youth. In course of a strenuous decade during which he taught others even as he himself climbed the rarefied heights of Tae Kwan Do and Karate, Sanjay has played master to 10,000-plus young boys and girls, some of whom have gone on to become champions in their own right.

It is not about just teaching what he has learnt, however -- Sanjay has gone further, to innovate, and introduce the concept of traditional meditation techniques into the martial arts regimen.

"I am reviving the oriental concept of meditation to curb violence," says the young master. "I am teaching my students to go for limited and calculated attack, targeted at winning and not hurting the opponent. Meditation has not only helped inculcate a sense of sportsmanship among my students, but has also considerably improved their performance."

Taking it one step further, Sanjay is now busy designing a special meditation-cum-martial arts course for the police and paramilitary forces.

His career thus far has been a study in stretching the envelope of the possible. At the outset, it wasn't enough merely to master Karate -- the then teenager went on to learn Ninjitsu (immoratalised in such Hollywood films as The Ninja), for which there is no instructor in India besides himself.

He then went in for advanced training from a martial arts instructor of the National Security Guards and, at age 16, won his black belt in Karate from Budokon International, Malaysia.

A year later, he was walking away with a silver medal in the Black Belt Division in the National Tae Kwan Do Championships at Mysore.

Not content to be a big fish in a little pond, the youngster took himself off to Korea's world famous Song Rok World Tae Kwan Do Academy in 1996, where he learnt under the guidance of the global guru, Rchang Seong Dong. That same year, he took his black belt in Tae Kwon Do and, in Kukkiwon, Seoul, grabbed a bronze in the Ambassador Cup Championship.

The personal odyssey of exploration continued, as Sanjay went off to Korea to learn another martial art form, Hapikido, from Master Hando, general secretary, World Hapkido Games Federation. Hapikido, for the uninitiated, is where you use your opponent's force to defeat him.

This year, Sanjay participated, on invitation, in the Third Martial Arts and Body Building Festival in the USA, organised by no less than Schwarzenneger.

"It was a wonderful experience to perform there, amidst world class martial artists like Don Wilson and Eric Lee," he recalls proudly.

And all this, impressive as it sounds, appears to be merely a beginning -- Sanjay is now setting his eye on the US Black Belt Open Championships in October.

Another day, another laurel for the youngster...

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