'The Day I Became A Runner' Delves Into Women, Sports And Rural Poverty

 

[Book review of Sohini Chattopadhyay’s “The Day I Became A Runner”, first published in YouthKiAwaaz]

“The Day I Became a Runner” begins with how the author took up running. “I was a lump in those days- a squat, easily breathless lump”, she says. Yet, she took up running to cope with the grief of losing her grandmother. Turning up at the neighbourhood park every morning became her mourning ritual.

Even though she stopped more than she ran, she turned up everyday. Like every other woman runner, she tried to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, when she had to pass someone she would stop running, sidle past and start again even if it disturbed her rhythm.

Through her experiences as a newbie runner, she makes very valid points about how even urban, educated women are excluded from public spaces, and of how women are acutely aware of the risk they take every time they put themselves in public. The chapter sets the tone for the entire book- it is not just the stories of eight elite women runners who represented (and in once case, almost represented) India in the international arena; it is a socio-political commentary on the role of women at home and outside.

The Trailblazers

The first two runners profiled in the book are names that only quizzers and the most devoted sports enthusiasts would know- Mary D’Souza who represented India in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and Kamaljit Sandhu who won a gold medal in the 1970 Bangkok Asian Games.

Two women from very different backgrounds who excelled in sports at a time when even educated women did not have ambitions beyond marriage and family. By juxtaposing the stories of her grandmother and mother on the stories of these two athletes, the author not only reinforces the passion and commitment displayed by them, but also gives an overview of gradual evolution of the role of upper class/ upper caste, educated women in urban India.

PT Usha

PT Usha is well known to every Indian- the story of the young girl who trained on the sandy beach of Payyoli and made history when she missed the bronze medal by a hundredth of a second at the Los Angeles Olympic Games has been told and retold multiple times.

You would think there is nothing new left to uncover, but the author brings out nuances that remain unspoken. For instance, when describing how the attitude of the sports officials accompanying the Indian contingent changed, she writes-
“More than anything else, she noticed the body language of the Indian official who had come to summon her for the phone call from the Prime Minister — the alertness, the eye contact, the slight bending towards her while speaking…Until that moment, the officials accompanying the Indian Olympic contingent had not spoken to anyone other than the hockey team members.”

The author, also, doesn’t shy away from displaying her ambivalence towards PT Usha. The author is clearly disappointed that the woman who inspired countless young women with her sporting prowess and who, post-retirement, started a residential athletics academy for women is critical of “those feminists”, and she articulates it while describing the young women who train under PT Usha- “I saw them being the equals of men, claiming their place in the world without hesitation. But Usha’s perspective was different. ‘I train girls because girls listen to authority’, she told me. ‘They have more discipline than boys. They are easier to mould and prepare. They bring you better results, more medals. And it changes their life too.’”

The author resolves her ambivalence- “It was difficult for me to separate my Usha from the Usha I met. Her politics didn’t take a thing away from her record on the track, from the thrill it was to watch her in action. Nor did it diminish her years of work training young women in athletics on her own, working outside government institutions. It should not have mattered. Yet it did.”

It is this honesty which shines through in the book, and makes it so special.

The Women Accused of Not Being ‘Women Enough’

The author reserves her best for the next three stories — Santhi Soundarajan, Pinki Pramanik and Dutee Chand- and sets the benchmark for how the media should report on gender. All three athletes were accused of not being women (or not being woman enough); accusations of that nature can wreck the personal life of a person, but what made it worse was the sensational way in which each case was reported by the media.

Shanthi, for instance, was accused of “failing a gender test”- clearly the person reporting it did not even know the difference between sex and gender, and was only interested in writing a titillating headline. The author tears apart the uninformed reportage of the media, while also giving the reader an introduction to gender.

Women, Sports and Rural Poverty

The last section of the book talks about how in many parts of rural India, sports is perceived as a way to break out of the cycle of poverty. For Olympian Lalita Babar, sports was the means to escape the grinding poverty of rural Vidharba and create a better life for herself in Navi Mumbai. Even before she became an Olympian, Lalita Babar won a hattrick at the Mumbai Marathon.

It is an event where hundreds of recreational woman runners participate in every year, but what sets them apart are the reasons why they run. Recreational runners run for the joy of running (or to attain fitness goals), but for Lalita Babar running is a passport to a better life. When asked about Lalita’s legacy, a coach said, “Lalita lacks the killer instinct. Most Indians are happy to be good enough.

They don’t want to be the best.” Whether this is strictly true or not, the reality is that as the headmaster of the school where Lalita studied says, “at least fifteen girls who graduated from this school have gone on to get government jobs after Lalita… (she) showed this was possible.” The chapter on Lalita Babar and the next one can be read as a thesis on gender and poverty in rural India, and highlights many issues at the intersection of gender and poverty.

Conclusion

The book ends with the story of Ila Mitra who would have been India’s first female Olympian if WW-II had not intervened, and who went on to become a trailblazer in the Communist movement, but for that, you need to read the book. This book is not just the story of elite women athletes, but speaks of how in a society defined by gender inequity, these women gave other young women the courage to dream big. Isn’t that an achievement in itself?

I bought a copy of the book, and my opinions are my own.