Article:APARNA TILAK

A parna Tilak of the Left Right Left, is unhappy with the state of affairs of sports in India. And no, she's not talking about cricket. "The state government as well as individual sponsors fail to felicitate or encourage even gold medallists in other fields," says Tilak, whose hus- band, Dr Amod Tilak is an avid bad- minton player. A consulting urologist by profes- sion, Amod has represented Maha- rashtra for the last 16 years. A gold medallist in the 40-plus men's doubles in Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur and silver medal win- ner in Bulgaria, he currently holds the No 1 position with partner Milind Ghate in the world bad- minton ranking. "Despite balancing hectic sched- ules as a surgeon to winning gold medal for the country Amod had to , dig into his pocket to pay for his travel and stay So did his partner," . says Tilak. She claims they weren't even giv- en T-shirts with 'India' written on it when they went for the game. This year, the players can't go to defend their title since Ghate cannot afford to pay for his ticket. Ruing the fact that the Badminton Authority of India doesn't care, Tilak feels, "The government should allo- cate funds to other sports too, spe- cially those in which players are performing."