New Delhi, Sep 27 (PTI) A new book tells compelling stories of athletes spanning the entire history of independent India and involving women from a wide range of social and geographical backgrounds.
Publishers HarperCollins India said “The Day I Became a Runner” by Sohini Chattopadhyay is an alternative account of the Indian republic chronicled through its women athletes. In that sense, it is a women’s history of India.
Whether it is Ila Mitra, who could have been the first Indian-origin woman at the 1940 Olympics, or Mary D’Souza, who ran and played hockey for India through the 1950s, Kamaljit Sandhu, the first Indian woman to win an individual gold outside India in Bangkok in 1970, or PT Usha, who redefined the 1980s and the decades that followed for women in sport across the country, each of the women in the book is a remarkable figure of post-independence India.
“Sport is a project of nationalism. It offers women a solid, respectable reason to put themselves and their bodies out there in the world: for national service. For elite sportswomen, it is national duty. For fitness and hobby sport enthusiasts, it is national improvement. For both, sport appears to bestow a higher degree of citizenship in the public sphere to women,” says Chattopadhyay.
According to her, the book is an exploration of this idea.
“I wanted to attempt a story of India through the embodied experiences of women: what it is like to inhabit this nation as a woman citizen. From the start, my ambition was that this would be a history of the republic, a history told through the lens of sport and the lives of women.” What does sport offer women in a viciously gendered society such as India? Does it make us more equal citizens? How equal? The book seeks to answer.
“Some years ago, I watched the film ‘The Day I Became a Woman’, a trilogy of stories about a girl on the cusp of adolescence, a young woman and an old woman. The second of the stories is about a group of women who have a secret. They like to cycle. Down a gloriously empty road, they cycle like a pack of kites, their chadors billowing like powerful wings.
“But in an unforgettable drone shot, we see that each of them, the dozens of women cycling, is wearing a different pair of sneakers, their colours grinning insouciantly beneath their all-black uniform. What an incandescent sight it was, what a blazing protest!” Chattopadhyay says.
Udayan Mitra, executive publisher at HarperCollins India, describes the book as a brilliant work of narrative non-fiction written with stunning felicity.
Associate publisher Swati Chopra says “The Day I Became a Runner” brings many diverse strands deftly together – history, gender, sports, reportage and personal experience.
Source: PTI News
