Vece Paes: A Man for All Seasons

Hindustan Times

a day ago

Siliguri: They say, 'Never meet your heroes.' Those people obviously never enjoyed the calming, charming, chuckle-a-minute company of Vece Paes, the winner of an Olympic bronze medal with the India hockey team in Munich 1972 and a doctor of medicine with a pioneering role in the anti-doping initiatives of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), who died in his adopted city of Kolkata on Thursday at the age of eighty. Dr. Vece Paes after a practice session with his son and tennis player Leander Paes at the SDAT Stadium, Chennai on Thursday. (HT)
Except that, leaving aside fans of a certain vintage, of course, Dr. Paes was better known as father to a hero. Indian tennis legend Leander Paes tore up the Davis Cup arena with a series of rousing victories against fancied opponents in the 1990s and emulated his father by winning an Olympic bronze medal in singles in Atlanta 1996. The paternal bond Vece Paes shared with Leander Paes ran deep and had its roots in his own, more complicated relationship with his father.
A Goan Christian, and not an Anglo-Indian as many mistook him to be, Vece Paes was born to Peter Paes of Assolna and Marlaque, who belonged to the D'Costa family of Velim. Brought up by the D'Costas since the age of four, after a sojourn in Tanzania in East Africa where Peter Paes worked as a doctor, Vece Paes followed the family's tradition and went to Bangalore to study at St. Joseph's. There, he made full use of the school's insistence on achieving excellence in both academics and sports, including cricket, football and hockey. He remembered meeting Richard Allen, the winner of three Olympic gold medals with the hockey teams from pre-independence India who was the games master at Bishop's Cotton College in Bangalore, at an inter-school match. 'We beat them hollow in hockey,' Vece Paes recalled. As someone who always believed sporting excellence comes from hours of practice, Vece Paes knew the importance of those formative years.
However, Vece Paes's hockey career bloomed only after he arrived in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1963 to study at St. Xavier's as part of his preparation to pursue medicine, another family tradition that saw his father as well as three of his siblings becoming doctors. Calcutta was a city where the sporting ethos of the British still flourished. Vece Paes fondly remembered the crucial role played by Father Cecil K. Leeming, his teacher at St. Xavier's, in helping him pursue hockey, a plan vehemently opposed by Peter Paes who thought it would be a hindrance to his son' career in medicine.
Gurbux Singh, another proud Kolkatan who won an Olympic gold in Tokyo 1964 and an Olympic bronze in Mexico 1968, remembers Vece Paes joining the East Bengal hockey team in 1966 while still at St Xavier's. 'Later, we both shifted to Mohun Bagan, where we played together for thirteen years, winning nine Beighton Cups and nine Calcutta League titles,' Singh said.
A supremely fit athlete, Vece Paes mostly played as centre half. He was sound in defence and quick to attack. He swiftly made it to the Bengal state team and then made his India debut at a tournament in Hamburg in 1966 under the captaincy of Gurbux Singh. He was unlucky to miss out on selection for the 1968 Mexico Olympics where Gurbux Singh was the joint-captain. 'That's why Gurbux is always nice to me,' Vece Paes would joke. He did make it to the India team sent to the 1972 Olympics, thereby fulfilling a long-standing dream.
By then, Vece Paes had joined NRS Medical College and qualified as a doctor, specialising in general surgery. Calcutta's traffic sergeants must have gotten weary of the sight of the young doctor tearing up the city streets in his scooter, and for a short while in a battered ambassador, in a bid to reach the Maidan in time for Mohun Bagan's matches in the afternoon. 'He would be tying up his shoelaces and putting on his shorts while we started with ten men,' Singh said.
Vece Paes married former India basketball player Jennifer Dutton, a great-granddaughter of the famous Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and they had three children, Jacqueline, Maria and Leander. Juggling the responsibilities of a young family, a fledgling career in medicine and the requirements of top-drawer hockey proved impossible after a while. 'I had a short career as an international hockey player,' Vece Paes was happy to concede. Vece Paes and Jennifer also separated while relatively young and Vece Paes lived with his partner, Juliana Van Steensel.
The young Leander Paes was crazy about football. 'He would literally take the muddy football to bed at night,' Vece Paes recalled. However, frequent seizures at the age of six meant Leander Paes was told to avoid full-contact sport. He took up tennis later. According to Vece Paes, that was why his son hit the tennis ball funny, as famously noted by Andre Agassi in his autobiography, Open: he never had the 10,000 hours of practice at tennis that one requires to master a skill.
As Leander Paes's tennis career took off, Vece Paes took to accompanying him whenever he could and it was then that he decided to shift towards sports medicine. Vece Paes went on to play a crucial role in setting up BCCI's anti-doping programme and doing the same in other countries under the Asian Cricket Council as part of former BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya's grand plans of globalising the sport.
Parkinson's slowed Vece Paes down in his last years, but could never dampen his spirit. He was certainly a hero and one who was worth meeting, again and again. The sun will shine a little less bright over Kolkata tomorrow.