The balancing act

Founder of Slacklife Inc. and a pioneer of slacklining in India Samar Farooqui, has recently brought his expertise to Goa. He is also conducting workshops at the ongoing Serendipity Arts Festival

CHRISTINE MACHADO
NT BUZZ

Samar Farooqui’s Instagram bio reads “fathering slacklining in India”, a fitting summary of his role in bringing the sport into the mainstream since he first took it up in 2010.

“When I started, maybe three people in India knew about slacklining,” recalls the master slackliner. Today, the sport has gained widespread visibility. “It has appeared on television, in a film and at festivals across the country,” he says, while adding that there is still room for growth.

What Farooqui finds most encouraging is slacklining’s reach at the grassroots level, with people practising in parks. “Those who enjoy it tend to stick with it and eventually pass it on to their children. That’s how communities grow,” he says. He points to actress Kalki Koechlin and her daughter, whom he has coached, as one such example.

Looking back to his early years with the sport, Farooqui remembers how he was once booked by the police for practising slacklining. “I was charged for obstructing pedestrian movement and blocking sunlight,” he says. Rather than discouraging him, the incident helped bring the sport into public view. “It gave slacklining the attention it needed,”
he says.

Today, he is invited by government bodies to introduce the sport in different regions. In Chhattisgarh, a Naxal-affected area, he conducted projects across multiple schools to share the sport’s positive values
with children.

Through his iniative Slacklife Inc., Farooqui continues to take slacklining to schools and corporate spaces, where he believes it aids team-building and leadership. “While it may appear individual, the sport is community-oriented,” he explains, noting how it creates unlikely interactions among participants. “When you are learning it, you have a friend who will be guiding you. In this way, an IT guy might have a shared experience here on the track line with an HR guy when otherwise, generally speaking, they would not have had the opportunity to interact.”

And there are so many benefits and learnings from this sport, states Farooqui. “I’m still learning. I am still deriving  value from it,” he points out. In fact, one of his major learnings recently is how there is no replacement for practice. “Once something is hardwired in your system, there’s no taking that away,” he says.

Elaborating on this learning, Farooqui shares that two years ago he had a major accident where the doctors told him that it was unlikely that he would ever highline again. “Once I recovered and returned to the sport, it all came back,” he says. Although he had to adjust to limited movement in his limbs, years of training made the difference. “Having put in over 10,000 hours earlier allowed me to adapt and continue doing what I love,” he explains. This, he states, taught him that in life, if there is anything that he needs to learn, he just needs to put in a good number of hours of practice.

His accident also prompted Farooqui to move to Goa sometime ago. “I needed to keep active because I don’t get enough movement, my body starts to hurt. Unfortunately, in cities like Mumbai, which is where I am from this becomes difficult. I don’t get enough movement. However, Goa has a lot of open landscapes and the sea, which is very healing,”
he says.

Since relocating, he has begun conducting workshops for locals. “For now, my aim is absolutely simple. I just want to keep doing what I love.”

(Slacklife Inc. is conducting daily workshops at Art Park during the festival. Children’s sessions run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., while adult workshops are held from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.)