Lifetime commitment

Kyoshi Hoshi Batliwala was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in karate at the 5th Akshay Kumar International Invitational Kudo Championship organized by Soshihan Mehul Vora at the Andheri Sports Complex in Bombay. More than 5,000 participants from all over India attended the tournament from October 30 to November 2, 2013. Batliwala has 40 years’ experience in karate and is a referee for kata and kumite certified by the Asian Karate Federation and a referee council member of the All-India Karate-Do Federation. At the Akshay Kumar tournament, Batliwala, Percy Bahmani and Sandeep Salvi demonstrated the benefits of karate with the sanchin (a kata considered to be the core of several styles) with Batliwala "hard testing” (body testing with kicks and punches) the others and withstanding the breaking of tiles on the body, etc.

( L to r) Percy Shroff, Batliwala, Ardashir Hira and Farzan Batliwala

Batliwala’s students won a total of 40 medals at the Championship. Among them were Percy Shroff who picked up gold in men’s kata and kumite, Ardashir Hira and Farzan Batliwala who won a bronze each in men’s kata. They represented the Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karate-Do Shobukan, India. Batliwala conducts his classes at Worli Hill Road and at Lady Engineer School. "Learning karate is still popular with boys and girls. Among the Parsis, it is probably not as popular as it was earlier but I still have a good number of Parsis in class,” he asserts.
Kareena Shavir Roshni of Dahanu Road won the silver medal in the girls under-16 kata event at the Championship. She has been training with Bahmani for the past seven years.