IN ANOTHER time, Anastasia Barla would have seen the hockey stick as her passport out of poverty. But the 10-year-old, who ran 60km in less than six hours in the first week of July, now plans a different journey, one that involves her feet pounding roads heated to blistering temperatures. For the reason, one needs to look to a boy half her age, Budhia Singh, whose 65km run in the early hours of May 1 captured the world’s attention. Anastasia dreams of how her frail legs will take her further away from the penury that has been the defining feature of her life since she was born.

The girl who was rejected at a hockey training camp — “Everyone made fun of me because I’m short, but I was determined to do something in sports” — now says she can be an international marathon star. Apart from Budhia, there is someone else she looks up to. PT Usha, India’s greatest athlete, grew up in a nondescript village in coastal Kerala, was peerless on the Asian stage and went on to miss a bronze by 0.01 sec in the 400m hurdles at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. It says much of India’s athletic prowess that Usha’s feat is remembered with misty-eyed fondness.

“I want to become a star athlete like PT Usha. If a kid like Budhia can run such distances, why can’t I?” says Anastasia, and nobody really has the heart to tell her just how heavily the odds are stacked against her. One of five children, her parents work as labourers and count themselves lucky if they take home a pound a day between them. After the local sports hostel — India’s version of a sporting school of excellence — rejected her, a disappointed Anastasia took to running.

She found a benefactor in Gregory Minz, a former hockey player-turned- politician, who says: “The tribal children here are so inspired by Budhia that they all want to run like him.” Anastasia is not the only kid with marathon dreams. A fortnight ago Dilip Rana, a 12-year-old from Pipli, ran from the Lion’s Gate in front of the Jagannath temple in Puri to Bhubaneshwar, completing the 70km distance in just over seven hours. What he has in common with Budhia and Anastasia is the poverty.

For Dilip, who claims to train 12 hours a day, the friend-philosopher-benefactor-guide role is played by Sheikh Zakir, who owns a business and is prepared to pay for his schooling and other expenses. “Our aim is to complete a 100km marathon without a break,” says Zakir. Budhia is believed to be between four and five. His mother, Sukanti, who has washed dishes to get by after the death of her alcoholic husband, only knows that he was born after the devastating cyclone of 1999, which killed 20,000. While it is easy to be cynical about the intentions of men such as Zakir and Biranchi Das, Budhia’s coach, it is hard to ignore the economic imperatives that fuel their actions. Budhia’s mother was lucky to make 25p most days, and the £10 that she sold him for was a sizeable sum for someone of her means. Those who have accused Das of using Budhia as a golden goose seldom ponder the flip-side. What would the boy’s fate have been without Das’s judo academy and the three square meals a day that he provides? Though it is hard to picture someone so tiny as a bully, Das says it was Bhudia’s abrasive behaviour that first caught his attention. When he caught Budhia bullying another child and mouthing expletives, he decided to punish him by asking him to run laps of the judo centre’s gymnasium. When he came back five hours later, the boy still hadn’t stopped.

Under Das’s supervision, Bhudia started eating more than a few handfuls of rice, and last April he started going to school for the first time after it promised to educate him for free. In the aftermath of the May Day run that ended in him collapsing with exhaustion three miles short of his destination, there was an almighty tussle between the National Human Rights Commission, which concluded that the boy was being exploited, and his coach, who insisted that he had his ward’s best interests at heart.

The television footage divided a nation, with some expressing admiration and others horrified by the sight of a small boy’s head lolling from side to side with fatigue as the temperatures soared towards 40C. With criticism mounting, the Orissa government insisted on Budhia being made available for a medical examination. An infuriated Das called it a farce, but the investigating doctors announced that he was “undernourished, anaemic and under cardiological stress”. They also raised the spectre of renal failure if the child was allowed to go ahead with his punishing training schedule.

The Orissa government then barred him from running long distance, but with Das threatening to approach the courts, the move was put on hold. “I have not committed any crime by spotting Budhia’s talent and helping him run long distances,” insists Das. “I am not putting any pressure on him. He is running on his own. I am ready to face those who are questioning my work.”

Budhia, who will head to Dubai in August to run a marathon there, prepared for his overseas adventure with a religious ceremony. While priests chanted mantras, those watching were treated to the astonishing sight of the small boy road warrior gasping for breath as pots of milk were poured over his head.

Dr KP Aravindan, a pathologist who has researched public health issues at length, says: “There is nothing wrong with these naturally gifted kids being encouraged to run and make something of their lives. The worry is that the coaches, who are not qualified, will try to make them do too much too soon. That can cause a lot of damage.”