Remembering the Dragon: A tribute to martial arts legend Bruce Lee

Updated On: 27 November, 2016 02:30 PM IST | | Hemal Ashar

<p>If Bruce Lee were alive, he would have been 76 today. Mumbai's martial arts students and teachers hail the king and say his Lee-gacy lives on in the kiai (martial arts war cry) that resonates in training halls across the world</p>

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Remembering the dragon: A tribute to martial arts legend Bruce Lee

If the Little Dragon, as he was known, who stripped the martial arts of its shroud of secrecy and intrigue and whose doctor according to Lee lore (the folklore that surrounds Bruce Lee) told him that he had the body of an 18-year-old at 32, were alive today, he would be blowing out 76 candles on his birthday cake, one suspects with the same ease he blew away his opponents in the martial arts world.

Faction

There is plenty of Lee lore so much in fact, that sometimes, myth coalesces with reality making his life and his feats seem the stuff of faction (a mix of fact and fiction) but, like Sensei (a Sensei is a teacher in Japanese) Hosi Batlivala, karate teacher says, "So good was Bruce Lee that he sounds supernatural. But, it was all true, he was the real thing."

Bruce Lee readies to deliver his devastating stop side kick complete with fearsome kiai

Batlivala claims that it was Bruce Lee's movie, Enter the Dragon that, "ignited young minds and bodies. Suddenly, everybody wanted to become a Bruce Lee here, the movie was a catalyst for the martial arts boom in India."

Batlivala adds, "The Bruce Lee one sees in movies, some of those techniques and movements may be trick photography but certainly, even on celluloid one got the impression that this man was deadly. Lethal, quick and especially strong on basics he was technically perfect."

Honey trap

Bruce Lee devised a fighting style called Jeet Kune Do. Literally translated, it means the way of the intercepting fist. "Bruce Lee's way of fighting has not seen the same popularity as karate or even judo perhaps because youngsters today want certificates, grades, ranks and belts (belts of different colours denote the rank in martial arts) and Bruce Lee never believed in any of that," explains Batlivala.

Batlivala who travels to Japan sporadically, where karate found a homeland, says that international martial artistes still talk about the awesome Bruce Lee in traditional karate schools, "on the Japanese island of Okinawa," signs off Batlivala, who believes that Bruce may have been killed by an actress who acted as a honey trap poisoning him, because it was believed he had so many enemies.

Lightning

Poison may have stilled the body that had earned Bruce Lee the epithet of the fittest man in the world but his spirit lives on from Okinawa in Japan to Andheri in Mumbai. Harish Kanchan, martial artiste says, "My generation was hugely influenced by Lee. When we were growing up and learning karate, Lee was at his peak," remembers Kanchan who is now a businessman.

The Andheri resident recounts, "I was particularly impressed with the way small-statured Lee could ward off opponents much bigger than him because of his phenomenal speed. When watching his movies, observe his roundhouse (to the side of the face) kick - it was a bolt of lightning. Then of course, was the shuffling side kick, both signature Bruce Lee moves, both to die for."

Sculpture

Martial arts teacher, Sensei Yagness Shetty and his students are giving Bruce Lee a unique 70-gun salute. Shetty and his young students will pay homage to Lee by making, "a 70-foot wood sculpture of Bruce Lee, which is going to be painted by students," says Shetty. The sculpture is to be put in the S M Shetty School hall at Hiranandani Powai.

For Sensei Sandeep Salvi, international karate referee, "Lee influenced me as a practicing karateka I was inspired to continue training despite the toughness and rigours of karate training when I started (much before the Bruce Lee craze, of course). I used to always say if he can overcome such odds and adversity, physical and mental, in his life why can't I? Now, I tell my students the same, never give up.

I tell them, "You have really lost when you stop trying to succeed. All other setbacks are lessons in life. If you learn from them you have not lost." Salvi says, "Bruce Lee's philosophy, 'to have no limits as limits, to have no style as style'. was his strength." Aficionados will know that the seemingly esoteric statement means that Bruce Lee stressed that one should take what works in a street fight, borrow from all fighting forms and go for strikes that are practical not flashy.