Dutee Chand gets restless as the video takes its leisurely time to buffer on the laptop – a big, black, unwieldy whirring machine, that she calls her newest best friend. She clutches onto the flap with one firm grip of the left hand and bends over it anxiously, her nose almost touching the screen which is supposed to play the 100m women’s finals of the last European and World Championship meets. The lazy Sunday noon air at a quaint Andheri apartment in one of the winding lanes opposite a shelter for the aged, is very still and does not particularly appeal to Dutee’s racing mind that is craving the thrill of watching some of the fastest contemporary runners of the world.

The race is over in a few seconds — “11.59,” she murmurs quietly pointing to the corner of the screen where the final positions put German Ida Mayer in 8th place. “I am 8th,” she adds absent-mindedly, nodding to herself, and then waiting for the next video to upload.

Dutee Chand never ran that race, but had she run, she explains she would have finished 8th. “Some more practice required,” she adds, contemplatively.

Barred from competing after her naturally high testosterone levels beeped up in a test for hyper-androgenism, Dutee Chand spent the last one month in Bhusaval, a dusty railway junction on the Maharashtra-MP border, over 450 km from Mumbai, taking exams to become a TC. “I’m good at any exam,” she chirps, “but running, you can’t beat me.”

She’s staying at the house of former Central Railway sprinter Vivek Sequiera for her two days in Mumbai, and he explains how Dutee could land “plum postings” like VT or Masjid stations on the central line, one of the youngest athletes to cut through the clerical ranks.

A hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is scheduled for end-January that will decide if Dutee can be allowed to run in the women’s section internationally. An interim order — Dutee shows the letter from Athletics Federation of India clearing her for domestic meets — allows her to compete at the National Games a month from now. “All these days there’s been uncertainty. It’s difficult to run without a target, you know. It’s like keeping on studying and revising without ever knowing when you’ll write the exam paper!” she says, pleased with the witty way in which she framed her dilemma.

Name calling

She might come from a small village a 100km away from the sea (which she wants to spend time looking at in Mumbai, on her last day before returning to Orissa), and her parents might have never received education, but Dutee Chand is adept at net-surfing and locating view-pages, her fingers moving over the cursor rapidly. She searches for race videos ceaselessly, listening to the commentators belt out names of sprinters from distant lands — “Europeans and Americans,” she informs, even the French names rolling off her tongue nice and easy.

The 21-year-old is unstoppable when she talks sprinting. “Jennifer Muda 11.46, but long legs can help bigger strides… 10.51… Barcelona…that Taipei girl succeeded in going past me, but in the other race I was unstoppable,” she is rattling off names, timings, venue tracks, before settling down on one of her own races where she explodes from the starting blocks and bolts ahead like from a slingshot.

“My start is the best, all coaches say that. And last 40 metres are never a problem for me,” she proceeds. Ever since statemate Saraswati Chand brought home a gold from the World Police Games back in 2008-9, Dutee Chand was smitten by the sprints. “I tried 800 but never got a medal. Endurance problem. I tried 400, lekin dikkat hui thi stamina ki. Hurdles I never tried. Long jump I used to like and won a medal also at 5.22 in juniors. But I can’t risk injury. My focus is 100, 200, because I have speed and power,” she says, momentarily believing that she’s already back in the international competition.

She snaps out of the reverie and the hurt comes streaming out suddenly. “My speed is natural. It’s not like I’ve tested for drugs. It’s not my mistake I was made like this. It’s God’s mistake,” she lashes out. She tells you that there’s a lot at stake for why she should be allowed to resume competing.

“I left my home for a reason. I stopped studying so I could run. And if I fail now…” she drifts off. “Central Railways gave me a job, and my biggest regret is I’ve never won a medal for them. Anglian Sport has invested in my training, and my coaches have put in effort. It’s all going to be for nothing.”

Sighing but never wailing, she drowns herself in numbers to prove she’s good – or was while she was still running. “In U-16 my timings went from 12.5 to 12.0 to 11.89 to 11.80 to 11.7 to 11.6,” she merrily chants the progression.

FRESH TAKE

“When I restart, I know all eyes will be on me,” she says. But before you think it’s the controversy over her gender that is worrying her, she says, “Coach saab says even Usain Bolt faces pressure. Every time he runs there’s pressure. If he wins a race, it’s nothing big, but if he loses even once, everyone will talk about it. They’ll say I don’t have speed anymore,” she says.

She swivels in and out of topics – international competition – domestic meets; barred from running – running the fastest finishing kicks; Lucknow (where she last competed in seniors) – Laussane (that will decide her fate). You can doubt her eligibility, but you can never doubt Dutee Chand’s absolute belief that she belongs at the top-most level, that one day she’ll run in the same meet as Jennifer Muda and the Jamaicans.

Dutee has met PT Usha a couple of times, the first time at Ernakulam. “She’s told me all-the-best once, but we’ve never really spoken. I know she went to Olympics, but I want to not only go to Olympics but also win. She was India (sprint) queen in the last generation. But in current times there’s no one in athletics. Indian women have done well in boxing and badminton and hockey, but we have no one in athletics. I like it when they say ‘Dutee Chand, next PT Usha.’ Rachita Mistry, the national record holder, and also a fellow Oriya, though, is her idol – also someone who’s urging her to stay the course and fight out this battle.

Dutee has received wide international support, and claims she has messages from Caster Semenya wishing her luck. “She’s said don’t take tension, we’ll stand by you,” she paraphrases. “I’m getting international support, but the top Indian athletes don’t seem interested. If someone like Sachin Tendulkar backs me, imagine how much support I’ll get,” she says. Right now, she’s content with discus thrower Olympian Krishna Poonia pinging her on Wattsapp. She logs into her Skype account and shows the long list of friends, and how each day someone will pop up and perk her up, telling her to stay patient.

Run free

But nothing cheers her up as much as talking about running. “Look at her technique, the hands can’t go above the ears. She ran 11.47 but it was 1.7 tail wind. 800 is very tactical. As a junior, I always stayed behind the leader so I don’t lose rhythm and and in the end sped away,” she says gleefully.

In the last few months while Dutee has been away in Bhusaval, and spoken more about hyperandrogenism than running, to TV crews and print media alike, she has desperately missed taking to the track and running.

“I’d left training so I’m worried about comeback. I know when I suddenly start, there’ll be body pain. It’ll take time. I’d wake up early in Bhusaval and do some exercise, and some gym in Mumbai, but no spike-work,” she rues. The pointed-studs have drawn her sweat and blood. “I got my first nails in 2006 at Sports Hostel from government. I was very scared of them. They had nails. I’d fall down a lot and then even cut myself badly on the calf tripping on it. But then I started liking running in them because I got good timing,” she recalls.

“10.99” a Russian coach at the Patiala camp had scribbled down as Commonwealth Games target for her on a giant birthday card she got last February. “Chief coach Bahadur Singh also wrote nice words. It was a big card and everyone had signed,” she recalls wistfully.

In her first serious race at school, Dutee had come second behind a classmate. So driven was she to come first that she didn’t stop till she’d left her behind by a good 20 metres. In her last big international event in Pune, Dutee was overtaken by a Kazakh. “My body got tight at 30m to finish line. I still get nightmares about how I lost,” she recalls.

She’d watched Indians at Asian Games and CWG on the TV, and wondered: “No Indian did well in 100m relay. I know if I’m allowed I can win big medals at top meets,” she says, almost pleading, planning enthusiastically about training in the US for Rio Games.

Before heading out to Hyderabad where Indian coach Ramesh will prep her ahead of the National Games, Dutee wants to spend an evening checking out Mumbai.

“I saw the Andheri Station. It is so big! And the Juhu beach also,” she says. “But my best memory of Mumbai is coming to compete at School nationals at Priyadarshini Park. I didn’t win any position that day, but it was nice to run with the sea breeze,” she says, joking that she doesn’t remember if there was a head or tail wind that evening.

For a young girl caught in the biggest whirl of her life compelled to speak on complex issues of gender, the world is prone to forgetting that she’s a youngster who thinks obsessively about running and being the best at it.