Sisterhood of the ring
Sisterhood of the ring
Sarjubala Devi is a restless woman.
She is 18, but looks about 14. She’s 5ft 2 inches and weighs 48kg. She’s sitting on her haunches on the floor, which is how she likes to sit, because the benches that line the walls in the boxing hall make her fidgety.
At the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports in Patiala, Punjab, it’s training day for the core team of women boxers, and Sarjubala’s session just got over. After the gruelling running, skipping, bag work, and sparring, she should be exhausted, like some of her teammates. But she looks like she wants to mix it up in the ring again. She flits about manically doing odd jobs. Someone needs water? Sarjubala’s got it. Someone needs help icing a sore eye? Sarjubala will do it. Someone needs a partner to hold punching pads? Sarjubala’s kitted up and in the ring in a flash. She’s like a speeded-up film, the way she jolts from idle to high gear.
She’s also one of the world’s most promising young women boxers.
She’s incendiary in the ring—a quick and fearless fighter who likes to move right into her opponent. “I need to get close in a fight," she says. “I’m very little no? I have no reach."
In the year women’s boxing takes the leap to become an Olympic sport, the mood at the national camp for the top women boxers of India at Patiala, where 40 women are in training right now, is buoyant. Young boxers like Sarjubala know they have the chance to explode into the limelight. “Everyone knows what an Olympic medal is," she says. “If you win one, you need nothing else."
The government provides cash rewards to the tune of a few crores, sponsors queue up to sign the athlete, his or her face gets splashed across newspapers and television channels, and the sport gets the kind of attention and care it has never got before. Just the kind of lifeline women boxers in India have been desperately waiting for. “We talk about little else but the Olympics," says Mangte Chungneijang Merykom, 28, better known as Mary Kom, one of the world’s top woman boxers. “Every day I wake up thinking ‘I’ll fight at the Olympics’. I’ve waited 10 years for this."
Raja admits that there was a desperate need to step up a gear. One of the coaches in charge of the elite women’s boxing team, D. Chandra Lal, says the drop in performance was because many of India’s best boxers got married and left the sport after 2006. “And we started youth development pretty late," Lal says. “We started the senior national championships in 2000, but the youth championship was only in 2006." The team’s chief coach, Anoop Kumar, has been criticized by boxers for following outdated training methods. Kom and her teammates have resorted to working with B.I. Fernandez, the Cuban coach of the men’s team, on his off days, and also with foreign strength-and-conditioning coaches provided by the Olympic Gold Quest—a private organization that helps India’s Olympic athletes—and MCT. “2011 was bad," says Kom. “There was no planning. I’ve won all my world championships under coach Anoop, so there’s nothing I can say against him, can I?"
“A woman coach is essential for women in a contact sport like boxing," Malhotra says. “You are going to get bumps and bruises in places you don’t want to reveal to a male coach. You may be having your periods—which is a sensitive thing in a sport where you get punched."
These recommendations were only put into effect in late-2011. Lal, at that time the chief coach of the youth team, was brought into the senior camp along with I.V. Rao, coach-in-charge of the junior team, in November. Geeta Oinam Chanu, one of the few women coaches in India, was also introduced to the camp. The best boxers from the youth and junior camps were moved in with the seniors. The senior camp was shifted from the Sports Authority of India’s, or SAI’s, centre in Bhopal to Patiala, which houses the best boxing facilities in India, and where the men’s boxing team trains. “The Bhopal camp was terrible," says Kom. “The boxing hall did not have any ventilation, let alone air conditioning. Imagine training there in summer? And we washed our own clothes, the food was poor, so often we cooked our own food."
In 1999, she fought the first publicized women’s bout in India—an exhibition match at the National Games. She started boxing in 1998, when she was 15, after her tae kwon do coach took her to Imphal, Manipur, to meet L. Ibomcha Singh, then the boxing coach at SAI’s Imphal centre. Singh, who is now the director of the centre, was looking for women boxers because Aiba had already announced that it would begin world championships for women in 2001.
Sarita always knew she was going to be an athlete. Her father loved sports, and would come back home from work and teach the children running, football, and boxing. When he died of a heart attack, Sarita was 14. “That’s what got me obsessed with becoming an athlete," she says. “I wanted to do it for him." Sarita’s six siblings and her mother produced just enough foodgrain and vegetables on their small farm in the village of Thoubal, 27km from Imphal, to feed the family, but had money for little else. “My mom went around borrowing from friends and neighbours," she says, “my older brothers started looking for odd jobs, the rest of us worked on our farm." By 1999, she had moved away from home to reduce the burden, and was living with Kom, who had also moved to Imphal from her village. Kom and Sarita rented a matchbox flat with money borrowed from Kom’s uncle in Imphal. They never had enough money for food, so both ate lunch and dinner at the hostel in SAI Imphal, and went without breakfast. “All the way till I became a world champion in 2006, it was like this," Sarita says. “I had no money to help myself or my family. I lived and ate at SAI hostels, which was the only relief. In 2006, I got a job (with Manipur police), so things started getting better. Last year, MCT signed me up and started taking care of my career."
Boxing has almost always plucked its champions from the downtrodden and the oppressed. From the favelas of Rio, Brazil, the ghettos of US, to the slums in the Philippines and prisons in Thailand, boxing has worked its transformative magic.
Take Pwilao Basumatary, 18, bronze medallist at the 2011 Youth World Championships. Pwilao’s father works as a hired labourer on farms, her mother is a housewife. Before she got into boxing, sometimes even two proper meals a day were a hit-and-miss affair. Friends from her school took her to a boxing gym near her village in Chirang district in Assam when she was 14. “We all went and hit around a little," she says. “It was great, very exciting." The villagers came to the gym and requested them to take her on for free. A month later, coach Chanu, who was scouting for talent for the SAI centre in Kokrajhar, saw Pwilao in action and picked her up for the trials. She was then given a scholarship and asked to stay on at the centre. From 2009, Pwilao has won three consecutive national youth championships. “I am the only athlete from my village," she says.
It is perhaps no coincidence that Manipur, racked by government apathy, poverty, insurgency and drug running; Assam, with its struggling economy and history of insurgency; and Haryana, notorious for its skewed sex ratio, female foeticide and “honour killings", produce the bulk of India’s elite women boxers.
When her father came to know, he immediately banned her from attending any more boxing classes. “Then my coach, Sanjay Kumar, who is famous in Bhiwani as a coach, came to our house and told my father ‘I will treat her like my own daughter,’" Rani says. “I actually call my coach and his wife ‘mom’ and ‘dad’."
A few months after she joined boxing, Rani won a silver at the 2009 youth championship. Her father then completely switched to her side, buying her equipment, and paying attention to her diet and training. “And still my relatives and neighbours pester me and my parents," she says. “The pressure is relentless, they either criticize my family or avoid talking to them." An Olympic medal, Rani thinks, will change everything. “It’s simple," she says. “People see that we do something that brings in money and fame, and then they stop opposing it."
Manoj Kumar Pushkarna, 43, a boxing coach in Rewari, Haryana, began training the first batch of women boxers from the state back in 1998. “I went from village to village to try and get girls to come and train," he says. “At first people were reluctant. They laughed." Then the first batch of women came, and in 2001, went for the first women’s national championship. When the news came out in local newspapers, a flood of girls arrived at the training centre. “I had 200 girls training here," Pushkarna says. “There was just no space!"
Razia Shabnam, 33, knows what it is like to punch through glass ceilings. She is from the first batch of women boxers to come out of West Bengal, and is the first woman international referee from the country. She began boxing at the Khidderpore School of Physical Culture, a club in a largely Muslim neighbourhood in south-east Kolkata, where women train in an outdoor ring, fenced in from the squalor of a dirt field where men play cricket or chase brown sugar.
Across the country, coaches say the same thing. The numbers are dwindling because the infrastructure is in a shamble, and there’s no money to be made in the sport. Younger women shy away from the sport because they see that the older generation is struggling despite reaching the top of their game at a global level.
At Pushkarna’s centre now, only nine girls train. At SAI’s centre in Kollam, Kerala, which has also produced a world champion, Lal was coach to 12 girls back in 2002. Now the centre has just two girls. The Junior Women’s National Boxing Championship in 2009 had 226 contestants. In 2010, there were 103. Ironically, at a time when the sport is poised to take a giant leap on the global stage, the pioneering spirit of boxing associations and the government at the state level in India to promote women’s boxing has fizzled out.
But for now, the girls in Patiala keep punching.
“The Olympics, that’s what will change…" Sarita’s hushed voice is drowned out by the slap and thud of fists hitting the bag.
IN THE FRAY
The other contenders for a spot at the Olympics this y
Preeti Beniwal, 24, 60kg
Her father is a boxing coach, and her sister is a boxing coach married to Olympian boxer Akhil Kumar— there was no way Beniwal could have escaped the ring. The 2008 national champion has fought in two world championships, and the
Usha Nagisetty, 27, 60kg
The world championships and Asian championship medallist from Visakhapatnam was inspired by her athlete father to join boxing. In 2001, she was only the second woman to join the city’s most prestigious boxing gym. “My neighbours were actually thrilled that I was a boxer," she says, “and I used to love the attention. It really spurred me
Kavita Goyat, 23, 75kg
The 2010 Asian Games medallist has a handful of Asian championship medals and has dominated her category at the national level for almost five years. Though her younger brother was a boxer, and her father a kabaddi player, Goyat’s family and neighbours in Hisar were opposed to her boxing career. “I did so well that everyone shut up," she says. “But I got very little support or funding from anybody, and I still don’t get it.
Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!