Mallika Writes: Just Speaking
Sephali & her friends
If she wins any more prizes or medals one of the family will have to move out of their spotless but tiny home. Her cv makes interesting reading. Besides getting 78% in SSC and an A+ in Tally 9.2, she has an M Com degree. From 1994 to 2008 she has stood first in every State level competition she has participated in. And now, discouraged by the State’s and peoples’ lack of interest or encouragement for a sportswoman she is looking for a job in a BPO. Meet Sephali Makwana, judo champion and trainer and now budding boxer.
There are three of them, all three unlikely candidates for this ostensibly male sport, Sephali, Monica and Sraddha. All of them glow when they talk of their sport. And all of them groan at what it would cost for them to become national level players.
What drew me to meet them and understand them and their families was the strangeness of it – young “marriageable” girls from seemingly tradition-bound lower middle class societies being encouraged to indulge in something so unladylike Wouldn’t their marriage prospects be ruined? Weren’t the parents haunted by taunts and jeers and criticism, the kind that greets the parents of girls deciding not to marry, or worse, marrying outside the caste?
Sephali’s father drives a school rickshaw, her mother stitches cholis and petticoats. She is one of four, the only sporty one in the family. Gunvantbhai and his wife both insist that the children study and do well for themselves – and get what they could not get or afford. The other three siblings are in the medical field, encouraged and aided by an uncle who is a doctor. With tears in her eyes her mother says, “Gujarat is so behind in sports. When children prove their worth, should no one encourage them? Every other state gives food allowances so that they can eat properly and improve their stamina. Here we get nothing. Not even the police force has special jobs for talented sports people. How long can we go on hoping?”
Monica’s father works in a ready made garment shop where he has been since he was in school himself. His mother is a housewife. Do they not worry about their daughter going to competitions, or playing a sport that could disfigure her? No they tell me, they trust her judgment more than they do their boys’. And what about a backlash from the ‘samaj’, arguably the main force behind how people behave or don’t? No, no, I am told, all the neighbours are proud of her, and the rest of the family now listens to us although we are the youngest. But Bharatbhai also has tears in his eyes when he talks of the complete disinterest of the State government in encouraging our young to win national and international awards. “She should go to Patiala to train but how can we afford the Rs 70000 or so that it costs?”
Is Gujarat’s gaurav only about wealth? Do we not want to excel in anything else? In sports, in academics, in issues of the environment, in the care we give our women and children, in the safety of our people, we lag shamefully behind many many states. Have we really sold ourselves to mammon so totally? Yes we are proud on how much is gambled in Gujarat during cricket matches – but is that the sum total of our involvement in sports? And the girls are not the exception but the rule. One of our young chess players has a similar story of a lack of any financial help though he continues to win tournament after tournament.
Gujarat may boast many SEZs in the making. But in Sensitive Emotional Zones we seem not even to have realized what we lack. And therein lies the real tragedy.
July 1, 2008
DNA
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