When an Indian interloper announced on a Jordan fans' message board that Narain Karthikeyan would be racing for the team in the 2005 F1 season, there was enough Anglo-Irish angst to set off the Crusades. It wasn't true, it was the end, it was a marketing decision, it was the dark doing of F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone. To all the moaning, the Indian who posted the news had only this to say: "Note to Webmaster: ramp up your server capacities."

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"Our athletes reflect a new confidence in themselves and in India." MICHAEL FERREIRA Billiards champion

India's first F1 driver picked up his first points for his team in a bizarre race in Indianapolis, US, a day before Sania Mirza made her Wimbledon debut, a year after India's first Olympic silver came home, two years after a girl from Kerala won a World Athletics Championship medal. Young men and women from a country thought to be athletically challenged are showing up all over the world, at courts, in courses and race tracks. Their voices are soft but their handshakes are firm. Note to the world: the Indians are coming.

This is not some triumphal sporting take-off on India Shining, prompted by the sight of a boy with a blue wheel on his helmet and a $25,000 steering wheel in his hand on the same racing line as men called Schumi, DC and Juan Pablo. Or by the arrival of a Spice Girl who beats the felt off not just a tennis ball but also every preconceived notion about how good Indian girls can't compete. Karthikeyan and Mirza are only the most visible faces of Indian sport's alternative reality. One found his way past at least 100 other contenders to compete in the most elite bracket of one of the world's most expensive sports. The other beat five top 100 players in two months to become the first Indian woman to crack the top 100. If the phrase "Indian sport" had been stolen by administrators and their egos, the loot of public taxes, drug cheats and cut-price coaching, a new generation is trying to steal it back. Karthikeyan and Mirza are not a lonesome twosome. While you were not looking, some of the country's best athletes have decided that India, with a billion people on a landmass of 3.2 million sq km, is in fact a very small country. In the world's reckoning, it most certainly is, which is why young men and women have fanned out across the globe, to answer one question-how good am I?

India is finally showing up and stacking up on all kinds of fields-Ritwik Bhattacharya is the country's first-ever full-time squash professional and has won four events on the PSA circuit. Joshna Chinappa, 18, who became the first Indian girl to win the British Junior Squash Open, is eyeing the world juniors in July but has already played two events on the women's pro tour. Shiv Kapur, the US-educated, Asian Games gold medallist, and Ashok Kumar, caddy-turned-pro-turned-dreamer who has never been to school, lead the new crop of Indian golfers who are at home on the Asian Tour and dream of Japan and the US PGA Tour. Arjun Atwal, who is playing on the US PGA Tour this year, has made nine out of nine cuts, with two top 10 finishes. Pankaj Advani, 19, is world amateur snooker and billiards champion while the polo-playing Ali brothers, Shamsheer and Basheer, are in Argentina trying to gain entry into the world's most competitive circuit. Vivek Shokeen, son of a Najafgarh farmer, and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, grandson of a Tamil Nadu minister, are India's top two tennis juniors, ranked among the world's 50.

FORMULA 1 NARAIN KARTHIKEYAN ALPHA MALE Narain Karthikeyan's measured walk to the low-slung, canary yellow car was halted by a tap on his shoulder. The man called Michael wanted a word. "Have a good run. Enjoy yourself," he said, and so was India's first Formula 1 driver welcomed into the most elite sporting club by Michael Schumacher, Ferrari's numero uno, seven-time world champ. Last week, Schumacher and Karthikeyan found themselves among only six cars during a bizarre race in Indianapolis due to the withdrawal of seven teams in a protest over tyre rules. Coming into the Indy GP, Karthikeyan and his team were grappling with car trouble, his two retirements in three races, comparisons with teammate Tiago Monteiro, accusations of blocking by former world champion Jacques Villeneuve, an alleged public ticking off by team boss Collin Kolles. Karthikeyan finished the weekend with his first points. "That's Formula 1," he says. Everything about it-triumphs, disasters and other impostors in between-is not merely big but mega big. "I began the season perhaps too perfectly. Then I had a couple of bad races. You have to put it out of your mind." It has been a bumpy initiation and like his team Jordan, he awaits the arrival of the EJ15B, the new car for the second half of the season. He says, "The best drivers in F1 have two things: speed and the ability to give thorough and accurate information back to the engineers. It comes with experience." Speed he was probably born with, his eyebrow-raising ability to push the car to the limit is known up and down the pit line. Feedback he is working on. His F1 season has been education for India and for the driver who found that unlike in other motor racing codes, in F1 the brake pedal is under his right foot, not his left. Breaking into F1 got him the headlines but his most remarkable feat has gone unseen. A driver from a land of two half-decent motor racing tracks underwent a lonely graduation on Europe's historic circuits as his support team watched, in sister Deepika's words, "feeling like aliens". A Jordan insider said, "People thought we were crazy to hire an Indian but we had great belief in his ability." With nine of 19 races completed, Karthikeyan reminds impatient Indians, "It's not half-way yet. I have made progress from Melbourne. By the end of the year, I will be a more complete driver."

TENNIS SANIA MIRZA SPICE GIRL Sania Mirza is scary. Not scary to look at or anything. Her posters were high on shopping lists when the Pakistanis came over for the cricket earlier this year. It is her confidence that can be as intimidating as her fizzing groundstrokes. She happens to be unnerving off court too. When asked whether she could cope with the pressure of a country wanting more, Mirza replied, "I want to feel the pressure, the expectations." Like it or not, this is not the kind of Indian girl who lowers her eyes and seeks the shadows. Overhyped, they tut-tutted, and Mirza won her first WTA title under the searing scrutiny of a 4,000-strong audience in Hyderabad which turned a tennis court into a cricket stadium six nights running. Flash in the pan, they sneered, and she went to Dubai, blew kisses and beat world No. 7 Svetlana Kuznetsova. Finished, they said, after a first-round exit at the French Open and she made a composed Wimbledon debut. While the Thomases doubted, Mirza went from No. 206 to No. 72 in the blink of an eye and a starburst of flash bulbs. She has a mean forehand, but that is not what has made her India's breakout tennis player, for her game is still an unfinished work. Mirza's most valuable gift-big-match temperament, composure and competitive hunger-can neither be taught nor bought. While she can stay in a groundstroke duel against anyone, she realises what she needs to stay at that level. "If I can get my serve and my fitness up, I can be up there in the top 20." Mirza is rational about rankings-"If I beat the world No. 4, it doesn't mean I'm better than her. A lot depends on the conditions and how well one plays"-but in the long run, numbers are a big deal. After all, there is nothing like No. 1. So brassy and bejewelled, the 18-year-old pushes on as an older, more timid generation watches half-adoring, half-apprehensive. When she tied up a much-hyped endorsement deal with Italian sportswear firm Lotto-which will have her signature line-she was ranked No. 77. "I hope to knock a seven off that," she chortled at the press conference. Many in the audience gasped. Hold on, girl, they wanted to say. Are you not afraid of falling on your face? Ah, but don't you get it? She is not the one who is afraid. We are.

Maybe it is all just coincidence. The numbers must work in India's favour some time. Bobby George, husband and coach of long jumper Anju, believes the stories are still scattered and isolated. That these have not fostered a culture and that medals and achievements of a community change little until that culture is born. From the viewpoint of older witnesses, the contrast is glaring. Seven-time world billiards champion Geet Sethi can feel the change as if it were tangible, considering it a reflection of the times. The opening up of the economy, he says, has set the ambitious sportsperson free. In the bad old days of foreign travel quotas, tennis player Leander Paes' father had to get special permission from the Ministry of Finance to remit dollar amounts for training overseas. Today's Indian athlete merely hands over a credit card.

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SHIV KAPUR & ASHOK KUMAR: GOLF US-educated, Asian Games gold medallist Kapur (left) and caddy-turned-pro-turned-dreamer Kumar, who has never been to school, lead the new crop of Indian golfers who are at home on the Asian Tour and dream of the US PGA Tour.

"Indians have changed, their perceptions have changed. They are not afraid of failing," says Sethi. Rifle shooter Abhinav Bindra, who has grey streaks on his 21-year-old head, says his generation has been raised competing-whether in school or college, or outside it: "It has at least helped me aspire to be the very best in what I do. I may not be where I want to be, but this attitude helps me push harder." Former badminton player Sanjay Sharma says, "Our children have grown up seeing top-class sport on TV and have exposure to world standards." The Paes-Mahesh Bhupathi partnership had Indians all over the world flocking courtside-in the US, some drove eight hours to watch them play. The Tricolour-waving hordes at the US Open led The New York Times to wonder on its front page whether Paes and Bhupathi could do for tennis what Mr Woods had done for golf. When Boris Becker called Paes a "little Indian shit", it startled but didn't subdue the Indians who beat Becker and partner in five sets. And at their debut at the World Doubles Championships, the two chest-bumpers picked Alisha Chinai's Made in India as the song to announce their arrival on court.

Sethi's predecessor Mike Ferreira has enjoyed watching this. "When I was setting off, one almost had to apologise for being Indian," he says. "Now it's like 'hey, listen bugger, we're Indian-who are you?'" The references to the "humble", "gallant" and eventually defeated Indian athlete had always grated. "This in-your-face character gladdens me."

Viswanathan Anand clearly remembers life after becoming India's first chess Grand Master. He had broken all domestic records, done what no Indian had done before but what was a Lightning Kid to do after that? It took six months of drifting before he fixed his eyes on the next: the rest of the world. The first Indian after Anand to win the world junior title, gm Pentyala Harikrishna knows where he wants to go: the World Championship and then cross the elusive ELO rating of 2700, a status available to only 15 men.

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RITWIK BHATTACHARYA SQUASH He is the country's first-ever full-time squash professional and has won four events on the PSA tour. Bhattacharya, who is supported by the JCT Group, says his target is to be world No. 1 in two years.	PENTYALA HARIKRISHNA: CHESSF US-educated, Asian Games gold medallist Kapur (left) and caddy-turned-pro-turned-dreamer Kumar, who has never been to school, lead the new crop of Indian golfers who are at home on the Asian Tour and dream of the US PGA Tour.	PANKAJ ADVANI: SNOOKER The 19-year-old from Bangalore is world amateur snooker and billiards champion and has won two world billiards titles in Malta.

Meanwhile, from Hyderabad comes word that Basheer, 24, and Shamsheer, 23, have made their home in Pilar, Argentina, the world capital of polo. "We need to get exposure to high-goal polo," says Basheer. Their father has already hired a stable and they will buy 50 horses and seek membership to a club. The Alis don't see the yawning gap between the two worlds: Argentinian teams play for 24-25 goals, in India 14-16 goals are the highest. They are occupied in finding a way across the divide.

Twenty-one years ago, after finishing fourth at the Los Angeles Olympics, a lithe Indian girl was offered a chance to train at an American university. She had to turn it down because she didn't meet the required educational qualifications but they all said P.T. Usha didn't dare. Five Olympics later, an Indian couple found someone to write letters in French so that the wife, India's first World Athletics Championship medallist, could work on her long jump in Paris' best stadia. Don't you dare say nothing has changed.

There exists within Indian sport a subtle caste system which sets apart the middle-class athlete from the hundreds who enter Olympic disciplines to land secure PSU jobs. Anil Singh, MD of sports management firm Proam International, believes modern sport squeezes out the athlete without awareness. It makes a certain Darwinian sense but it is not good news for India's ordinary citizens. Then along comes an Ashok Kumar.

When the golfer needed money to buy a train ticket for an event in Kolkata in 2002, he borrowed Rs 700 given to his sister-in-law as mooh dikhai when his niece was born. Kumar finished the 2004 season No. 2 on the Order of Merit (prize money earners) with five titles from 15 events, picking up Rs 13.48 lakh. For many caddies-turned-pros it is a comfort zone. Not for Kumar. "I want to win the US Open," he says, and when the reporter's pen comes to a halt, repeats, "To win. Not just take part."

SWIMMING NISHA MILLET A CAUTIONARY TALE

For every Indian athlete who discovers wings, there are several others who find themselves wondering what it takes to keep flying. This summer, when possibilities for Indian sportsmen and women seem endless, swimmer Nisha Millet's is a cautionary tale. The face of Indian swimming for a decade, national champ and Olympian, she has spent the past two years trying to win back time lost due to back pain that took two years to diagnose and kept her out of action from August 2000 to September 2002. It turned out to be a benign tumour that required surgery but in the long run, it cost her a chance to be at her best for the 2004 Athens Olympics. She is back in the water again for two reasons: to win back her right to compete and to teach swimming for seven hours a day at Bangalore's Koramangala Club and the Catholic Club, so that she can earn some money to afford top-level training again. In between, she finds time to train and study for her final-year graduation degree. Millet is only 22 and her family reckons her best years are still ahead of her. They are courteous folk, the Millets, and courageous too. Even as the financial burden of supporting not one but two sporting careers in India has borne down on them, they have held on to their dignity, but not their life's savings. Millet's father Aubrey reckons that the swimming careers of his two daughters-Reshma, who is younger, is a SAF Games gold medallist-has cost him Rs 45 lakh over 13 years. He moved from Chennai to Bangalore in 1998 to give his daughters the best training in the country, giving up a secure job in a private company to set up his own business at the age of 51. Two years later, he sold his flat in Chennai to finance his girls' training abroad and his wife returned to work after 20 years to help buffer the family income. Aubrey has run the round of sponsors-all the usual suspects-to find a way for Nisha to return to competition again, and has met with tepid response. Ask him about Reshma and he says, "When I can't get any funding for Nisha, how am I going to find any for Reshma?" Every Indian athlete's parents learn to swallow pride for their child's sake. A swimming official once called Aubrey "extremely greedy". The father who had quit his job and sold his flat was told, "You already have one daughter on the team, now you want two in there." It is enough to break your heart and your faith. But the Millets are not easily broken.

The mind of these adventurers is immune to hurdles and hesitation. A lack of literacy doesn't mean Kumar can't play golf. He has travelled to 20 countries, someone always helps fill in those immigration forms. He is one of two men at the top of the next wave of India's travelling golf pros along with his suave alter-ego and partner Shiv Kapur-from Modern School, Delhi, and Purdue University, US. In 1998, while caddying for his mentor Amit Luthra in Bangkok, Kumar buttonholed the unreachable Woods and somehow they communicated. The son of a wood-gatherer from a village in Samastipur, Bihar, found his mantra when Woods told him, "Believe that no one is better than you and never lose your courage." The Indian says, "If I don't try to make the most of where I have reached, there won't be a bigger bewakoof (fool) than I."

India has long rationalised the reasons for its sporting poverty: Indians are too small, too weak, too vegetarian, too passive. They are entertainers, oriental trick artists, not competitors. The problem with the young is that they barely listen. When India's No. 1 tennis junior Nedunchezhian is reminded that he is, socks, shoes and spiky hair, only 5 ft 8 in, he goes, "So what?" And reminds you that world No. 7 and former Wimbledon champ Lleyton Hewitt is not a giant. "If you can be one of the fittest players, then you can win."

Never challenge the greed of a competitor. At the back of the grid in F1, sitting in a car which someone said had the aerodynamics of a brick, Narain Karthikeyan is still not content. You're there, dude, relax, coast a little. But no, his dream has changed shape. He still shakes a defiant fist. A mid-season hiccup notwithstanding, he is sure his time as a front runner will come, and after his first season we will all know. No one dares question Karthikeyan anymore. Didn't they say he was deluded to dream of F1? Well, now who is India's most visible athlete worldwide? They have heard of him in places where the name Tendulkar cannot reach.

Advani is also waiting before plunging into the Anglo-centric shark pond of professional snooker. During his first dip in 2003, he drew the only other Indian, Manan Chandra, in qualifying, not once but in two events. The second time both men were sure that it was not a coincidence. He has since cleaned up two world billiards titles in Malta, will finish his studies and take another crack. No rush, he thinks, he is only 19. Squash player Bhattacharya, 25, is rushing, he has set a clock on himself, after playing tactical and technical catch-up over the past four years. "My target is to be the world No. 1 in the next two years," he says. Atwal doesn't believe that merely being on the PGA Tour-which two decades ago was as distant as Pluto for Indian golfers-is a big enough deal. "I must win a tournament on the PGA Tour to truly have a breakthrough," he says. Greed is good.

There are no safety nets in this world, and given the way sport is run in India, it seems there will never be. Given a choice of investing in the elite athlete or the high-on-eyeballs-low-on-standards tamasha, India mostly chooses cheap glitter. Corporate support is extended to athletes in smaller sports but it is the indigenous industry rather than the behemoth multinational giant that has put its faith behind these great gamblers. Bhattacharya is being funded by the JCT Group; Mirza's oldest sponsor is the GVK Group, and during Anju's Olympic year, real-estate company Sobha Developers backed her. This does not grant the sports administration the right to support fund-sucking farces like the Afro-Asian Games. Bhupathi says its real job is to "support mass participation in all sports at the grassroots".

For every athlete, trip wires still lie beneath the surface of their homeland. The Georges are once again looking for sponsorship to maximise the time between now and Beijing 2008, and Bobby's voice has fatigue and bitterness. "If you're happy with moderate performances, it is easy. But when you try to be above average, the problems begin." It is a choice India's athletes live with every day.

Where will it all end for them as they wager their youth away on a game of chance? Today they don't think of consequences. But tomorrow when they are a little grey and a little slow and a little heavy, they will realise that they have earned life's ultimate prize. They will never wonder what if. The undaunted will know no regret.

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