‘Bhai, Hindi aati hai?’ – When Neeraj Chopra turned down Rahul Bose’s help as translator

Actor Rahul Bose offered to help him with his translation needs, but Neeraj Chopra had taken care of the problem all by himself.

Gold medallist Neeraj Chopra has become India’s poster boy since his remarkable showing at the Tokyo Olympics earlier this month. The Indian javelin star is the toast of the town attending innumerable felicitation events since his return to India. But Neeraj Chopra was a star in the making, years before he became India’s second individual gold medal-winner at the Olympics after Abhinav Bindra. The Haryana athlete was unabashedly proud of his roots and preferred to communicate in Hindi over English at a 2018 literary festival, where hea was a guest of honour alongside Bollywood actor Rahul Bose. While taking questions from the audience at the event, one of the attendees wanted to ask him about how he deals with setbacks in his sporting career. Obviously, his first instinct was to ask the question in English.