Chennai: There are limited activities to explore when one is confined to the house during a lockdown.
While many experimented with cooking, baking, composing songs and vlogging, Maduravoyal based advocate and actor, Karate Karrthi (44) trained his young twin children in martial arts.
Having appeared in eight Tamil films with four more on the cards, he is a familiar face in the industry having made his presence felt in movies such as Kaithi and Theeran Athikaram Ondru.
His children Ajay and Avanthika (11) are students of class-7. This week, they appeared with Karrthi in a video for Independence Day showing their martial arts skills.
Karrthi is no stranger to the world of martial arts. In fact, he changed his name in the Tamilnadu Gazette to Karate Karrthi .
He has been training since 1991. “I bagged the National championship for Karate 13 times and earned a gold medal in the All India Police boxing tournament and I was earlier a policeman”, he says.
Having nurtured one dream his entire life: to be a world champion, he joined the Central Reserve Police Force, as it was a gateway to attend more tournaments and prove his mettle.
However, after joining, “I saw the partiality and politics being played out and I resigned and became an advocate”, he says.
His children began learning when they were five years but since they were good in studies, Karrthi had stopped training them .
When the lockdown began, much like everyone else, things in Karrthi’s household were laid back.
“Everyone was waking up late, staying up to watch movies and the children were watching way too much TV and I had to discipline them. That is when I began training them for martial arts”, he said.
The Independence Day martial arts demonstration was his family’s way of taking part in the I-day celebrations.
Karrthi says, “the twins are well trained in karate, judo, kickboxing, gymnastics, weapon fighting, nunchakus, Silambam, Bo Staff, Tonfa and Sai. Ajay is strong in gymnastics and Avanthika’s strength is in fighting.”
They practise for two hours in the morning, attend online classes and then practise for another two hours in the evening’, he says.
Karrthi will have his sports academy ready by next year. As his dream of creating aworld champion remains, he hopes one of his future students would clinch the title.