Piso Skate team stories - Nunkima Ralte.

Nunkima Ralte

Nunkima Ralte, we all know him by the name Kima! He is a team rider for Piso Skateboards. Kima & Piso have been collaborating since Piso was formed. He has been always been part of our team, infact we are all more like a family. To know more about Piso X Nunkima's story you should definately read the article - 'Nunkima R: Homecoming'. Its a beautiful story expressing how everything clicked and things happened :). So following is the journey of Kima on his skateboard, this is what he had to say:

My journey on a skateboard, how it all started?:
As far as I can remember from my childhood days, I have faint memories of few people riding a skateboard and doing tricks. I cannot recollect which year it was though, to be specific. When I was 8, I got on a skateboard for the first time in my life. One of our friends whipped out a skateboard one random day, and everyone wanted to try it out. We all did, I stood on the board for a long 2 seconds before I took a hard slam haha! Anyways, post that experience I went back home straight to our storage room and dug out my sister's old skateboard. It was a J.J.Jonex board, more specifically a toy board. It needed a lot of fixing, the wheel was missing, the bottom ply was falling apart an so on. (side note : My sister used to skate when she was a teenager in the late 90s.)

I remember, I rode that board for about a year or so, on and off, not caring much about it. This was pre-internet era in Mizoram so I had almost no way of learning any tricks or progress. One day I saw the Concrete Circus show with Kilian Martin in it on TV. It was somewhere between 2009-2010, don't even remember which channel it was but that was the first time I had somewhat of a desire to do tricks. I tried to mimic the tricks from my memories of the concrete circus show. I remember lining up small disposable cups and telling myself I have to find a way to get through them, I could not jump (ollie) yet, in fact I was still in doubt whether that was actually possible. So I tried to do all sorts of pivots, maneuvers and monster walks over the cups. I also didn't know what those tricks were called at that time! In retrospect that was the first time I attempted freestyle skateboarding, somewhere between 2009 - 2010. These memories are extremely foggy and hazy for me. But then my interest for skateboarding waned away as I grew up a little.

I stopped skating, because everyone else had stopped. My general thought was that of any 10 year old's "if you're not doing what everyone else is doing you're not cool". I was young, my values were very vague. Took 3-4 years off whilst to find my inner self and interest. In the late 2013’s I started skating again, but broke my wrist immediately. Once the injury healed around in March 2014, I actually started skateboarding and my skate journey began. That's when I seriously started having real longing and interest for skateboarding.

What skateboarding means to you? What you want to do for skateboarding in India:

I believe skaters have their own way of defining skateboarding, and it is enjoyed in a different manner based on their personality. I observed that my extrovert side tends to enjoy the physical, external thrill of it more. And my dominant introverted side found it as an internal and mental adventure, I've learned so much from it. How skateboarding affects my mental state has so many parable lessons that are applicable as life lessons on a vast variety of situations. And so for that reason it means so much to me. 

I want for skateboarding what any skateboarder would want, I want it to thrive. 

Did you ever think of quitting skateboarding? If so why? What kept you still going and not giving up:

I have. I have thought about quitting skateboarding a ridiculous amount of times. There's a variety of reasons. The first time the thought lingered was in 2016 after failing to go to Canada for World Freestyle Round Up. But I shook that off pretty easily as the temptation to go had a weak motive. However, I seriously considered quitting and in some sense quit skateboarding for a period of time in the late 2018-2019.

The majority of my childhood days, I never felt like I was worth enough for my peers or society. Team sports always felt like coaches and fellow teammates blaming you for not doing well, so I had a long underlying desire to prove my worth to the world. One silly reason which manifested within me to do something great was that I get appreciated by my peers and society. Skateboarding was the only thing I knew and I choose the same to prove my worth. I felt, if I get good at something and am appreciated then only I would be happy, that was my silly mentality back then.

Now, I could skate pretty good but there was no metric of what's good enough to prove my worth. I used to skate for my own satisfaction and that was enough. Secondly, it was a way of expressing myself and by that I mean anything that needs expressing, all my emotions, anger, sadness, happiness, joy & excitement. The act of skateboarding for me was fit as an expression for all these things. And thirdly, it was the first thing I was ever able to excel at from early on. So I had this ambition of becoming the "Best skateboarder in India".  To quench my underlying thirst for appreciation and, I suppose a validation too. 

I decided to pursue skateboarding as a career. I shared this idea and my decision to pursue skateboarding among my friends and family. Most thought of it as a joke, few who cared enough told me its a mad ambition. But I guess the fire had already started and doubts only helped in fanning it.

So with the drive of self disappointment and desire to eliminate that, I worked my heart off to become the best in the country up until the fateful Jugaad International 2018 which I won. when I won I felt like I was no longer disappointed at myself and when that happened my strongest driving force was diminished. Skateboarding then felt meaningless because I had assumed the shallowest of meaning to be the most significant for so long. I didn't know then, although insanely effective, I was driven by the wrong motives, and so I stopped fighting, that's what it was, skateboarding was my way of fighting for the justification of my existence and my own soul, I suppose. And without a reason to fight, the fighter may as well be dead.

What kept me going was nothing inspirational, I had nothing else. Skateboarding was by then my major/public identity and I couldn't just drop it.  2019 was a disaster, I had my final exams a couple months after but by then I couldn't study cause I truly didn't care anymore, and so I failed willingly. Slowly, I skated less and less and by midway that year I didn't enjoy it anymore, and sort of stopped completely, I just filmed skate clips occasionally and posted on social media to make it look like I was still in it but at that point you could say I had quit, at least mentally.

August 2019 if I remember right, I got a call from Escape Skateboarding, telling me about a trial/selection for an international skateboard contest that was going on in Banglalore, I had no ambition to go, hadn't skated properly in months. But I felt the pressure to go, mostly by myself and so I did. I went knowing I hadn't done anything to deserve to be selected yet, I hoped. When I lost the selection, even though the people who got selected were my friends I couldn't celebrate, that was rotten of me. I stayed at the skatepark after everyone had gone, sitting by the mini-ramp, I was incredibly disappointed at myself that I had completely collapsed under the weight of my own success, but that's where I started the journey up. I was disappointed at myself, that was what drove me to success and that was the exact drive I needed to get back up. But then I also promised myself that I would pursue something bigger than myself this time, and not such foolish, short sighted goals, I had learned my lesson.

So, though I still want to be the best version of myself and still am working to do that every day, my values in skateboarding now include getting more people to see the beauty of it and getting more people into it, helping the skateboarders to progress not only skill wise but also career wise, expanding the community and sharing every available useful knowledge that I can share with the community. With the state of my own progression and skill, I am never satisfied and always want to get better but I have also learned to appreciate what I have at each moment and to be happy despite. I always sought to satisfy my ambitions, but stay caught in the chase because I have learned that in satisfaction lies my doom.

Instagram Channel - Kima_gr
Youtube Channel - Kima!

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