What kind of man disowns his own name? What kind of country decides that genius costs too much? That a lakh of rupees and close attention is too high a price? Indian hockey has never been good at answering questions of any kind, so the ones that swirl around Rajiv Mishra today will remain where they are.

THEN

Mishra at the 1997 Junior World Cup in the UK, where he was first acclaimed as a world-class forward

It is not even a good time to ask. Two good overseas showings and hockey is the flavour of the season. Twelve months before the Olympics, hopes are soaring, the sport gets due acreage in papers and hallelujah, a sponsor shows up. There is no reason then to think of the boy who was, just to rush past the man who is. Mishra once wished people would do just that: look up at the young railway ticket checker, hand him their ticket and return to their business. But he had done too much, too quickly. Think of Tendulkar at 19-that's what Mishra was to hockey.

For one heady year between 1997 and 1998, he was a centre-forward-prodigy-rock star. When India reached the finals of the Junior World Cup in Milton Keynes, UK, Mishra, player of the tournament, wore his curly hair long, tied in a bandana-"Style mein. Sabse alag dikhna chahiye (For style. You must stand out from the rest)". A whirling dervish in the D, he also had the strength and change of pace to shake off hulking defenders like fluff off a sharp suit.

In Milton Keynes, Dutch coach Roland Oeltmans set up three cameras to film the player he called the fastest Indian forward he had ever seen. Australian coach Barry Dancer said Mr Flash Gordon could, in 10 years, be the "most devastating forward" in the world.

Less than six years on, Mishra's only distinction is that he is one of the younger TTEs stationed in Varanasi who rides trains to and from Kanpur. The only people he shakes off today are passengers looking for berths.

These discordant realities belong to the same man because of an injury to his left knee-a routine incident on a practice pitch in Patiala when two men went sliding for the same ball. Goalkeeper A.B. Subbaiah was protected by a few kilos of gear, Mishra by his sense of timing and little else. He talks of the day and the days after in an unexpectedly gentle voice that tells a devastating story. Once the swelling subsided, Mishra could walk, jog and climb stairs. Only when he tried to sprint and change direction did he feel the pain. It was a routine training injury that surgery, rehab and supervision would have fixed in less than six months.

The tragedy is not that he had to have two knee operations four years apart, or visit what must have been 150 doctors. The tragedy is that it was nothing, but it was allowed to ruin his career.

A confused and worried 19-year-old had his first surgery, but cut short the rehab to try and make it to the 1998 senior World Cup team, limped on the field and then off it. V. Bhaskaran, his coach in the juniors and seniors, says, "Okay, maybe he didn't have a proper rehab. But he was a readymade player and we lost him."

When Mishra first called the offices of the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) for guidance, he was told to have the surgery and send them the bill. Two lots of bills, totalling only Rs 50,000, are still pending. But more than money, Mishra was owed regard and mentorship. That's a debt no one owned up to and everyone left him to drift. His coach from Varanasi, Prem Shankar Shukla, wrote to the IHF, asking them to pitch in. There was no reply. When the Indian team won the 2001 Junior World Cup in Hobart, IHF President K.P.S. Gill was asked about Mishra. Gill was typically brutal: "You can't take care of someone who does not want to be taken care of. At that level, players should know how to take care of themselves."

A move from home in Kolkata at 14 to a Varanasi hockey hostel, a stint in Delhi at the Air India Academy, and less than a year with the national team, both senior and junior, is hardly an education in life management. A few bad months, and at 21, Mishra was informed in many ways that he was finished. So he turned in on himself; his face tells the tale.

NOW

A ticket-checker in the Railways, Mishra seeks a second chance

The golden boy good looks have faded into adult resignation. For two years, he retreated into his room and drank incessantly, as much as it took to "flat ho ke" fall asleep. He didn't watch TV, read the papers or touch a hockey stick. His mother watched him, her demanding, youngest child who always got what he wanted, even if it was the most expensive hockey kit, collapse into silence and sullenness. Hired by the Northern Railways, he learnt the job he hadn't planned to do and began checking tickets at the station. For months he did not pin the metal name tag on to his uniform. "I didn't want people to recognise me, ask me what had happened." They still did.

The source of his ruin has also been the source of his redemption. A travelling military man told the TTE he had never forgotten the player. On monthly visits to Kolkata, his mother would not let him be. "Try again," she said. "Don't you see, you are the one who made our family famous." His friend Pramod Chaurasia tried another tack: "It's too much for you. Don't play. Just eat and sleep." Shukla called and said, "Yeh India hai yaar, but you still have time."

A second knee surgery was followed by a gradual return to the pitch. First he jogged around the field, watching the others practice; then one day he brought his stick along. Then set up casual games, two kids on his team versus nine others. Mishrabhai & Co always won. Last November, he turned up in Delhi for an inter-Railways competition, about 10 kg heavier, a lot slower, but there-on the field, stick in hand, sizing up the opposition. Earlier this month, he played for the Railways in the Murugappa Gold Cup in Chennai, scored goals and finished runners-up via penalty strokes. Bhaskaran says, "If I were the national coach, I would have him in the camp, get him in shape. What do you have to lose?"

The military man calls him from Delhi and says, "Play for me." His family grumbles he is not like he was in 1997. He watches his old tapes with a sadness that dominates his persona more than his funky haircut, branded T-shirt and clunky boots. He needs, he says, to be inspired by someone who believes in him enough to punish him in training, to show him that his dream, his one final fitting curtain call, is still possible. "I want to come back and play better than I ever did. To show the world who Rajiv Mishra was and where he has come back from."

There is a large poster on the walls of the dank 7'x7' room he shares with Chaurasia. It's him, in India colours and a Harley Davidson bandana, changing direction: the centre-forward spotting opportunity, the panther about to pounce. Mishra has signed the poster and added the maudlin words of a Boyzone song that was the rage in the 1990s: Love me for a reason. Let the reason be love.

Rajiv Mishra has made turbulent peace with the fact that Indian hockey couldn't find a reason to love him.

The plainer truth is that it probably doesn't love itself enough.