A sudden downpour spurs Bharati Jadhav into action. “Can’t you see the rain? The clothes are getting wet,” she yells at her son Amarjit, 16, and husband Ranjit, 40. But the two are glued to the television, watching weightlifters at the London Olympics. “The world can go topsy turvy, but nothing will make them turn off the TV,” says Bharati, 42, a resident of Goleshwar village on the outskirts of Karad town in Satara district.

She doesn’t really begrudge their fascination with the sport. After all, their home Olympica Niwas is a special place: It was built in memory of Ranjit’s late father, Khashaba Jadhav, who gave independent India its first Olympic medal. Ranjit and his son are visibly proud while showing us the freestyle bantam weight category wrestling bronze medal that Khashaba won at the 1952 Helsinki Games.

But the glory in old photographs and news clippings in metal almirahs is a stark contrast to the less-than-humble damp patches on the walls where clothes-pegs and calendars jostle for space. I ask Amarjit if he wrestles too, but he walks out in a huff. His father explains: “He’s very touchy about how his grandfather was treated. He’s upset that the media too only remembers us once in four years. At a time when people know the name of Aishwarya and Abhishek Bachchan’s daughter, it’s offensive that a man who achieved so much in the face of hurdles is forgotten.”

Says Khashaba’s contemporary and old friend Shivajirao Mohite, 87, “Every time Khashaba was pushed down he found a way of standing up. It was this spirit that brought him Olympic glory. But he was also human and the way his achievement was completely forgotten broke him from within. He never complained or expressed the bitterness at being slighted but he’d grown very quiet and became a loner,” says Mohite. “I would often rake up old stories when I met him at his sugarcane field. But he simply clammed up. It was as if the memory was eating him up from within.”

Ranjit recounts how qualifying for the games was only the first hurdle for Khashaba. “He had no money to travel to Helsinki. Baba asked the then Bombay presidency chief minister Morarji Desai for financial help, but Desai mocked him, telling him to come after the Games. He then appealed to the general public for help. Knowing they were working class people, he began accepting even an anna or two as donations. In return, he’d give them ticket-sized receipts,” Ranjit remembers. R Khardikar, principal of Rajaram College where Khashaba had studied, mortgaged his home for Rs7,000 to send his ex-student to the Games.

In Helsinki, the Karad wrestler, who had fought only in a mud-pit, found the going tough on a mat. “Baba won six bouts one after the other when he heard his name announced for a seventh — the bout with Manod Bekov of Russia.”

When asked why Indian officials didn’t protest, Ranjit smiles sadly, “To react, they’d have to be around. We had to ask Finnish authorities for the only photograph of him getting independent India’s first medal.”

On his return, Khashaba was surprised to find Morarji Desai at a felicitation organised at Dadar’s Shivaji Mandir theatre. “We asked Baba why he didn’t hit out at Desai in his speech that day, but he just said it was not the noble thing to do,” says Ranjit. “In Karad, drums, trumpets and crackers accompanied a bullock cart cavalcade that led him to the local Shiv temple. Baba’s eyes would glisten every time he remembered how a 15-minute walk had taken seven hours that day. But after that rally, he was forgotten.”

In 1955, Khashaba enlisted as a police sub-inspector and stayed in that position without a promotion for 22 years. Finally on the insistence of embarrassed colleagues who’d risen meteorically, he was appointed ACP in June 1982, for six months, just before he retired.” Post retirement, his request to live on in the police quarters in Mumbai’s Naigaum until Ranjit completed his SSC was turned down, and the family shifted back to Karad. Olympica Niwas was only half-built when Khashaba died in a motorcycle accident 13 months after the Jadhavs left Mumbai. “I was only 13 then. No one from the government came for funeral,” says Ranjit.

It took dogged following up from the family, just so the Olympian to be awarded posthumously. He was given the Shiv Chhatrapati Award in 1993 and the Arjuna Award in 2001.

“We lived a difficult life till 1996, when Leander won a bronze and local Maratha bodies moved the Sena government to help us.” Ranjit was made assistant depot manager with the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation and later managed to get an Indian Oil dealership. “We may not be rolling in money, but at least we’re better now,” he says. “But why should we be reduced to begging for recognition when we see others who are already privileged being celebrated and toasted even for ‘almost’ achievements?”

According to Mohite, even if Khashaba had been made a wrestling coach, it would have done justice to his need to be recognised. “Also, he’d have done wonders for the sport. Look at what happened in the case of others like Milkha Singh.”