A swell guy

India doesn't win a lot of surfing medals. One 24-year-old is looking to change that. Ramesh Budihal recently won India's first individual prize at the Asian championships. He loves the adrenaline of competing amid the unpredictability of the ocean. Surfing has also taught him patience, and strategy. ‘I’m really happiest out on the water,’ he says

- Gowri S

It started out rough. Mahabalipuram’s waves had not yet settled into the rhythm Ramesh Budihal, 24, was hoping for.

Then he found his opening curl and manoeuvred his way through it, to earn a score of 6.17. Indonesia’s Pajar Ariyana and South Korea's Kanoa Heejae were racing ahead. In the dying moments of the heat, Budihal swept through volatile swells for a score of 6.43, and a total of 12.60.

The final horn sounded.

Budihal grinned and held up his board. He had just become the first Indian to win an individual medal at the Asian Surfing Championships, clinching bronze on August 12.

"A few years ago, nobody would have said that surfing would grow this fast in India. But we're getting stronger every year," he says.

Budihal has watched this change unfold. He was five when he first took to the waves, in the coastal town of Kovalam in Kerala.

He and his parents had moved from the landlocked town of Muradi Tanda in Karnataka, so they could open a small clothing store here. In the long, lazy hours after school, Budihal was now learning to swim from children who had been swimming since they were toddlers. He was learning to love the sea.

Then, one day, he saw one of his friends, Krishna Thagarappa (now a surfing instructor), on a board. What was he doing? How was he doing it? Where did he get his wetsuit and that strange floating platform?

Thagarappa took him to meet Jelle Rigole, a Belgian who founded and teaches at the Kovalam Surf Club, a nongovernmental organisation that promotes the sport as a healthy, outdoor activity for children to pursue in the empty after-school hours.

Rigole lent Budihal a board and gave him a few lessons. The boy seemed to take to it. He was unusually steady on the water. For me, Budihal says, laughing, it was pure love, from the first moment.