- Title: INDIA - OLYMPICS 2012: First Indian female wrestler qualifies for Olympics
- Date: 22nd May 2012
- Summary: CHILD SITTING, WATCHING THE GIRLS PRACTISING
- Embargoed: 6th June 2012 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: India
- Country: India
- Topics: Sports
- Reuters ID: LVA86WCESO2B2F3EYVG1UXQA5CEN
- Story Text: As Geeta Phogat completes her sprint at a sports campus in Punjab state, one of her coaches nods approvingly at his stopwatch, another rushes to check her pulse, and a third ushers her toward the gym for a bout of wrestling.
Such attention and encouragement is routine for a top athlete, but it is unusual for women from Geeta's village in the northern Indian state of Haryana, where it is rare for a girl to have a life outside her home.
The 23-year-old Geeta, who is the first female Indian wrestler to qualify for the Olympics said there are limited opportunities in her village.
When Geeta and her wrestler-sisters began training, they were ridiculed by the community.
Pointing to her cauliflower ears, a common condition among wrestlers in which the outer ear is swollen, Geeta told Reuters that the people in her village used to say that nobody would marry her because she would have disfigured ears.
Twelve years later, Geeta is a local celebrity. Ask for the house where Geeta lives and people several kilometres away can direct you to it.
"Those who used to ask my father to be ashamed of himself for training us in wrestling, now say they wish they have daughters like me," says the 23-year-old, who will be competing in the 55-kg category at the London Games this year.
Her home state of Haryana is notorious for its gender bias and sex-selective abortion. A girl child is considered so undesirable, and they are so frequently aborted, that a 2011 census found there were only 877 women for every 1,000 men. The national sex ratio is 940.
Girls are often viewed as a financial burden because of the marriage dowry given by the bride's family to the groom - a social custom widely practised despite being illegal in India.
An adolescent girl in Haryana is typically expected to do household chores and is often married by the age of 15, most social studies show.
Most women are expected to do chores such as bathing livestock, milking cows or working in the fields. Education is not a priority.
Hardly any of Geeta's childhood friends went to college or have a job. She had an unconventional upbringing as her father decided to coach her in kushti, traditional Indian wrestling, which is usually fought on a mud surface.
"If I was not a wrestler, or if my father was not a good coach, I would have been married by now," she said.
Instead, Geeta and her sisters were brought up with her father disapproving of long hair or feminine clothes.
Geeta said since she used to wear a track suit and T-shirt while training, which did not go down well with the villagers, because women are usually supposed to wear salwar kameez (a long shirt paired with loose pyjamas).
Geeta now trains in a fully equipped, air-conditioned gym at Asia's largest sports institute, which includes a palace built by the erstwhile Maharaja of Patiala.
It is a far cry from her initial days, when she trained in an enclosure adjoining a cattle shed in her village home.
Geeta told Reuters that there was no roof where she trained, and it used to get very hot during the day and the mud used to feel very cold during the evening.
Her father and coach could not afford to buy a wrestling mat used in international competitions.
"Milk, vegetables, everything is so expensive, and I had to provide five daughters with an athlete's diet. An athlete's diet would cost minimum if 200 rupees ($3.6) per day and I had five athlete daughters, which means it is at least 1,000 rupees ($18.4) per day. Where do I get the money from?" said Mahavir Singh, a 52-year-old former wrestler, as he smokes a hookah in his courtyard.
He added that he received no facilities or help from the government.
While kushti is popular in Haryana, a state known for producing quality wrestlers, it is considered a man's sport with no training infrastructure for women. The Phogat sisters had mud bouts with boys to hone their skills.
Geeta said she was both excited and nervous about the Olympics in London, a city she has never seen before. But even if she does not win gold, her success has inspired girls in and around her village.
Since the success of the Phogat sisters in international tournaments, their father has started training other girls from the village in the family-wrestling hall - which finally has a mat.
"Those girls who used to think they can only work in the fields, they want to make a name for themselves. Those who are studying, now feel that they should work hard and earn respect in the field of education. Now they try to convince their parents to send them here for training," said Babita, Geeta's younger sister who bagged a silver medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
While she was excused from doing household chores, Geeta found her father's training schedule overwhelming at first.
"She used to get thrashings from her father. Her dad used to keep a stick. If she was late even by one minute in the morning, she used to get it. If she performed badly during the practice, she would face the stick," says Daya Kaur, Geeta's mother, who keeps her face covered like most women in rural Haryana.
Geeta is India's medal hope for the upcoming 2012 London Olympics and has become a role model in her home state and inspired new dreams in her state which continues to suffer from gender-discrimination. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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