'It takes time to get good results. So many external factors affect our lives and our boxing'

Four women, independent, strongvoiced and stronger willed, visited the TOI’s office on April 12, 2023. What resulted was happy pandemonium as office staff left their posts and terminals to be in their midst, content to even linger in their periphery. India’s Sisterhood of the Glove did not disappoint. Smartly quipping and ribbing each other when not offering deep insight into their often-lonely world of boxing, newly-crowned world champions Nitu Ghanghas, Nikhat Zareen, Lovlina Borgohain and Saweety Boora told a tale of the everyday Indian woman, and the hardships they face with a smile on their lips and sweat on their brow. Read on…The world knows about, and revels, in your feats. Can you let us inside your minds a bit, how do each of you feel personally about your success? Where did this journey begin? 111087997Lovlina Borgohain (75kg): This is my third World Championships medal. In the Olympics too, I had won bronze. This time, my target was to change the colour of the medal… to win gold. It was my dream. But, this is not the only dream. The dream is to become an Olympic champion. This was my first step — to prove to myself that if I can win a gold at the Worlds, I can become an Olympic champion too.We got so much love, such affection and appreciation from the Delhi crowd. They supported us throughout the tournament. We could only hear the chants of “India, India!” I feel proud that I could bring gold for India. When I couldn’t win a medal at the Istanbul Worlds and Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, I was so disappointed with myself that I was in tears.I felt I let the opportunity go waste to bring a medal for India. That phase of failure taught me a lot. Maybe, God was taking my test. He wanted to see how strong I am, whether I can make a comeback or not. If I hadn’t lost at those two championships, I wouldn’t have become a world champion here. That failure taught me a lot. I am mentally very strong now. I am not the same Lovlina which I used to be before the Tokyo Olympics. I am taking things calmly. My target is not complete. I have to fulfill my dream of becoming an Olympic champion. medium111088451Nitu Ghanghas (48kg): I am feeling very happy. It’s hard to explain, but it’s that simple. When I won the Youth World Championships gold in 2017, that was also held in India, in Guwahati. Now I have won the gold in seniors, this is also in India. But it’s been a tough journey. Sometimes, thoughts did cross my mind that I couldn’t continue with boxing anymore. I had once even seriously thought of quitting it. I have faced several obstacles in my life to reach where I am today.I am from a village in Bhiwani. My training centre was 20 kilometres away. I used to take the state roadways bus to reach the training centre. I would return home late. In rural areas, a girl returning home as late as 8 to 9 PM. . . people talk. The villagers would ask my parents, “Why are you allowing your daughter to come home so late in the night?”But my father, Jai Bhagwan, supported me a lot. He works as a bill messenger in the Haryana state secretariat. For my training, he even went ‘leave without pay’ so that he could take me to the centre. When I’d train three hours daily, both in the morning and evening he would stay there for the entire duration, winters, rains or summers.There were times when we were left with no money in our household to support my diet and training. He will borrow Rs 300-400 from neighbours to take me to championships. That was a difficult period. There was a time when we couldn’t even run the household and even pay for school and tuition fees of my younger siblings. We even had to sell my mother’s jewellery to make our ends meet. My mother used to tell me, “Why are you continuing in boxing, you are not winning any medals. The family’s financial condition has only worsened because of your boxing. Why don’t you just leave it?”The village elders, neighbours and relatives used to taunt us that this family has gone mad in their wish to make Nitu an international boxer. They can’t even meet the household expenses, yet they are paying for her boxing. Then I went through the injury phase when I suffered a pelvic injury in 2016. I didn’t have any sponsor to pay for my medical expenses.I was fed up, but my father kept pushing me. I was treated at Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital. I was selected for the Youth World Championships in 2017, and I won gold there. The next year too, I won gold. But when I broke into the senior camp in 2018, I suffered a shoulder injury which kept me out of the national camp for two years. The ghosts of the first injury returned. I thought I wouldn’t heal. Things worsened when my wrist too was injured.But all that was nothing compared to the Covid-19 that followed. The world stopped. We were at home with all the training centres closed. I managed to make a comeback to win gold at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games. It made me a stronger boxer. I learnt a lot. medium111061814Nikhat Zareen (50kg): My first boxing sessions were with boys. I remember being bashed up by a boy in the ring. I was bleeding from the nose and had a black eye. My mother saw me and began crying. “Beta, that’s why I don’t want you to become a boxer,” she wailed, “It will ruin your face. Who will marry you then?”I told her, “Ammi, why are you taking tension? If I get name and fame, there will be a line of grooms outside our house. ” We are four sisters, we don’t have a brother. So, every parent worries about their girl child, especially when you don’t have a son.Today, I am happy to have won two back-to-back World Championships titles. I am happy about defending my title. When I started boxing, several people had told us, “Why have you chosen this sport?”In our religion, wearing short clothes is not allowed. In sports, girls have no future. But my father had been a sportsperson himself. And he understood my feeling, that I want to become a boxer. His support also rubbed off on my mother. In the Nizamabad academy where I used to train, I was the first girl.We were also not that financially stable. Both my parents worked in Saudi Arabia as we kids stayed with our maternal grandmother. My childhood was spent with her. When my parents returned, I was into athletics. The PE teacher was my father’s classmate. He told him, “Jameel, your daughter is like you. She has all your traits — hard working and stubborn. ” That may have pleased my father because he supported me in athletics for two years, but there was so much competition in athletics in Andhra Pradesh (then), and coupled with the poor infrastructure, I enrolled myself in boxing instead.Since I saw only boys in the ring, I asked my father whether a girl could take up boxing? My father gently explained to me, “In our society, the girls are not that strong for a sport like boxing, if something happens to you, who will marry you?” But I told my father, “I’ll do boxing and show the world that girls can also box. ”I started my boxing career in 2009. Within a year, I had won the junior Nationals gold, then the Nationals gold. I was selected for the junior World Championships where I won gold. When I stood for the first time on the top of the podium and the national anthem was played, that feeling was surreal. I decided then that whenever I get a chance to represent the country, I will make sure that the national anthem is being played in that tournament.My dream is to win a gold medal at the Olympics next year in Paris. The past year, 2022 has been the best year for me. I have remained undefeated so far. At the 2018 World Championships in New Delhi, I wasn’t part of the Indian team. I had gone there as a spectator. Today, I am a part of the Indian team and a back-to-back world champion as well. medium111087720Saweety Boora (81kg): I have faced a lot of struggles to reach where I am today. This was my second-biggest dream, to win a gold medal at the Worlds. The ultimate aim still is to become an Olympic champion. We are from a farming family. When I started boxing, our family’s financial condition also wasn’t that great. Added to that, the village elders and family members would tell my parents, ‘Why are you letting your girls play sports. One day, you will marry them off. ”They wouldn’t stop at that. “Even if she makes a career out of sports, how far would she be able to go? The girls are not meant for playing sports or doing jobs, they will only bring bad names to the family,” they would say.When I had joined the SAI centre, some relatives even told my parents that if you send your child to play sports, consider us ‘dead’ for you. “(Because) girls from good family backgrounds can go for studies but not to play sports and come home late at night. ”You know very well, in our Haryana, especially in our Jat community, people will not shy away from murdering in the name of family honour. People have so much ego in our community for no reason as such. We have to abide by their rules and regulations.Maybe out of that fear, my father suggested that I play an individual gameand introduced me to boxing. Soon, I became a state-level champion in my weight category. Then in my first Nationals, I won gold and later at my first Youth World Championships in 2011, I secured gold. Those three years were a fabulous period for me.Then came 2014. For the World Championships silver medal that I won in 2014 (Jeju Island, South Korea), I had to literally decide between life and the game.I had won medals at the Worlds and Asian medals before. Before this gold, I had won a medal at the World Championships before, a silver in Jeju Island, South Korea in 2014. My next target was the Olympics. I tried for Rio 2016 but my weight category wasn’t there. Before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, I had put in a lot of hard work and was looking forward to competing there.I hadn’t been home for the last one year, preparing for the Games. But in 2020, when I wasn’t sent for the Olympic qualifiers by the federation, it turned out to be a strange phase of my career.All of a sudden, my whole world, my life as a boxer was snatched away from me by one federation decision. I left the camp in anger and returned home. I decided to quit boxing. It was very depressing. I had stopped watching TV, stopped answering my phones. As a distraction, I started playing kabaddi.I would leave home at 5 AM for practice and would end up spending 12 to 13 hours perfecting the game. I want to avoid boxing and still remain fit, but in three months, I got so good at it that coaches began saying I could even make the Asian Games squad.Yet, despite doing so well in kabaddi, I wasn’t entirely happy deep inside. Boxing was still my first love. Someone told me that the federation was conducting trials for the Asian Championships. I hadn’t entered the ring for 10 months. I practiced for four days and had four sessions before I won all the bouts and got selected in the team for the Asian Championships. There was a bronze at the end of it, but most importantly, I had returned to the ring.Nitu, you were meeting a familiar rival in Alua Balkibekova, the Kazakh boxer…Nitu: Yes, there was pressure that I had lost to her in Istanbul. She was seeded No. 1 in the 48kg. The last time, I played her from a long range and couldn’t get my strategy right. This time, I focused on playing her from a close range and counter-attacked her. I played an attacking game.But even after winning the World Championships, there was simply no emotion on your face…Nitu: Whatever work I am doing, I have been celebrating accordingly. This World Championships win is the first step. If I start celebrating this win with fanfare, then I won’t be able to grow further.How do you all handle stardom? How does it feel to be a star?Nikhat: Lovlina was the first among us who got to stardom. . .Lovlina: I don’t consider myself a star. I am the same person I used to be earlier. If we start thinking that we are stars or different from others, then we won’t be able to succeed. With fame comes responsibility and a person should be more humble rather than arrogant. You should be thankful to god that you are a privileged lot.So, it’s always important to keep working hard and to carry yourself in public with a sense of responsibility. The day I had started boxing, my target was to win an Olympic medal. I reached the destination in Tokyo. So that journey for me ended right there. Now, the next phase of my journey has started. It’s all about beginning afresh. It doesn’t make a difference whether you are a star or not. Everyone is equally talented.But you are a celebrity now…Lovlina: Well, I try to stay away from the limelight to some extent. I don’t like much attention. That’s why I am not that good a speaker (laughs). My focus is not to become a star or that people recognise me or run after me. My dream is something different. I know one day my boxing career will come to an end, and I will leave it. I am saying it for the first time, I have not disclosed it earlier to anyone. My target is to do charity. I want to help the underprivileged after retiring from boxing.I don’t want to become a politician. I’ll do something away from boxing. I am earning well and want to use that money to help others.Nikhat, you tell us about handling stardom. . .Since childhood we have grown up watching stars and celebrities on TV at our home in Nizamabad. We used to see them in newspapers. And one day, you see yourself on TV and in newspapers… you become a celebrity. So, that’s a wonderful feeling. People usually run after actors to get their autographs or to click selfies with them. Some chase cricketers.When I saw all of that, I used to think, when will I get the stardom or become a celebrity? When I started getting attention after becoming the World Champion (in Istanbul) last year, it just felt great.The way people appreciate my boxing, approach me for selfies and photos, it feels good. But where did I get this stardom from? It’s boxing which has given me everything in my life. Just because I have attained stardom, I can’t run away from the sport. If I lose my focus because of stardom, then the same game will take away your stardom as well.I won’t forget my roots. I don’t forget my humble upbringing. I am the same person I used to be even after getting stardom, outspoken, childish and funny. Some people change after becoming celebrities, like how they present themselves to the public. I speak from my heart. If I feel like someone has spoken wrong about me, I’ll tell them on their face. I won’t bitch behind your back. That’s my personality.And I enjoy my life to the fullest. When there are no competitions happening, I don’t even like to talk about boxing. I switch myself off and spend some time doing normal household chores. It’s about unwinding yourself for a few days because we all know that you have to return to boxing one day. An athlete’s shelf life is relatively short.For me, the life I am living today, I want to enjoy it to the fullest. You don’t often get to lead such a privileged life, especially in my community and religion. So, I want to live in the present and enjoy every bit of it. Because you never know what will happen tomorrow, whether you get such opportunities or not.Is there any training or guidelines in handling stardom within the system?Nikhat: We have a team in our camp, the psychologists, nutritionists and the high-performance director. At the camps, we are constantly in touch with the psychologist and remain in touch with our team of mental trainers even when we are not there. To be honest, we are no kids ourselves. We are all grown up and mature athletes. We can distinguish between how much attention we need to pay to a certain development and where we can avoid it.All of you come from different cultural backgrounds. Lovlina, you are from Assam, Nitu and Saweety, you are from Haryana and Nikhat, of course, you are from Telangana. How do you gel with each other? Do you quarrel amongst each other?Saweety: (laughs) We fight in the ring and not amongst ourselves.Nikhat: We live together like one happy family. Everyone knows about each other’s struggles. After the disappointment of the Tokyo Olympics, Lovline faced a lot of ups and downs. I remember when she lost at the Birmingham CWG, she was crying, sitting outside the lift area. I was her room partner at the Athletes Village and I was waiting for her to come to the room. It was 11 in the night and she still wasn’t there. Worried, I found her sitting outside the lift area with her training bag and still in the Indian jersey.She was inconsolable. I brought her back to our room and consoled her. I told her, “That’s how the lives of athletes are, you win one day, you lose another day. You face such ups and downs in your career”. She was about to quit boxing but, as a friend, I was feeling bad for her and I reminded her of all the positive things.Physically you are strong, but mentally also such things help you become stronger. I believe that whatever happens in your life, it happens for good. When she changed her weight categoryand switched to 75kg, the results started coming her way. She has been undefeated in her category so far. She has made a strong comeback. That’s how we support each other in our times of hardships. So, we are like a family.How do you handle setbacks? In India, there’s so much pressure from society, family and the general public…Nikhat: Kuch to log kahenge, logon ka kaam hai kehna. If we start listening to what people say, then we won’t be able to perform. At least we took risks in our lives and achieved something for us. Those people can only sit in the comfort of their homes and comment. If we start listening to their criticism, we won’t be able to grow in our life.Saweety: They are the same set of people who have done nothing in their lives but will comment at the slightest of an error. Because, a busy person won’t have time to interfere in anyone’s life. Honestly, I didn’t know what my neighbours were up to because I never had any interest (in their lives).Lovlina: That’s why it takes time to get good results, because there are so many external factors affecting our lives and boxing. I won a medal at the Olympics but lost in CWG. And people started criticising me like I am no one. Such criticism has only made us stronger. As Nikhat said, I am an emotional person, so it took time to adjust to such things. Every single loss teaches us to perform better in future competitions.What keeps you motivated? Tell us something about the mental-conditioning part. . .Lovlina: I started my journey in 2012, it took me nine years to reach the top. My mentality was that I have successfully achieved one target in my life. Now I have to start again. That was not the case earlier, and that affected my performance because I realised it’s not a fresh journey for me. I was wrong to think that my journey has ended with the Tokyo medal and it’s time to start all over again.How do you fight the urge to not have your favourite dishes and sweets?Lovlina: (laughs) This happens with Nikhat a lot!Saweety: Whenever I feel the need to have my favourite dish, I’ll eat it. I’ll run 10 extra laps at the ground but will have the dish. Once, I was on weight management ahead of a competition and my mother had brought malpua (pancakes). I had to mind my weight for the tournament but was also craving for malpua.My weight increased by one kg, and because of that I had to run for extra one-and-a-half hours. Twice during our stay at the hotel for this Worlds, I had pizza. It was only the ninth occasion in my life when I had pizza.Nikhat: I’ll have biryani when I’m back in Hyderabad. Before my finals here, I told my mother to keep the biryani ready on the table.Nitu: I had gone to Bhiwani for a day and had the home-cooked choorma dish.Lovlina: In the north-east, we can have five-six varieties of dishes prepared with lentils. I want to have some local village dishes.Boxing has aggression and a little bit of violence. During those bouts of three minutes each, what’s your mindset?Nitu: The moment I enter the ring, I have only one target – to win the bout. No friendship, no favours offered. I treat my opponent as an enemy and go for the kill. She could be my friend outside the ring, but when in the ring, I don’t show any mercy. I have to defeat her at any cost.Can an emotionally weak person be a good boxer? Can a person who is not that strong mentally be a tough boxer?Nikhat: Jab tak jigar nahi hai na, ye mentally strong hokar bhi koi fayda nahi hai. (Till you don’t have heart, there is no point being mentally strong and all that).Saweety: The person who gets up on his feet again in the ring and lands punches on his opponents, that’s a true champion.What do you like to do in your free time?Nikhat: I am a Bollywood fan. I am poori filmy. You tell me to act, sings songs or do shayari, I am good at all of them. Mere baare mein itna mat sochna, mein dil mein aaata hoon, samajh mein nahi (recites Salman Khan dialogue from ‘Kick’. ). Arz hai … Dooor hain aapse toh kuch gham nahi, dooor rehkar bhulaane wale hum nahin. Arrey roz mulaqat na ho toh kya, kya, mulaqat se kam nahin? (Recites couplet).Lovlina: My favourite singer is Jubin Nautiyal. But I hear Assamese and Bollywood songs. I listen to Arijit Singh’s songs too.Nitu : I help my mother in household chores. I used to visit the shooting range with my brother during his practice sessions.Saweety: Social media updates. My brother and sisters tell me that I am good at acting, so I upload such videos. I listen to bhajans and devote my time in worshipping my Isht Devi (cherished deity). I also watch Korean dramas on Netflix.Note: The videos were originally published on April 18, 2023