Nikhat Zareen still cries every time she sees Shah Rukh Khan's eyes fill up after that crucial last goal in her favourite sports film Chak De! India and the song Maula Mere Lele Meri Jaan plays. Salman is still her favourite Khan though.
She always goes all out, whether she's battling India's most powerful female boxer MC Mary Kom or whether she's decided that she will be a boxer to prove to the world that “girls are strong too and they can do anything”. She was 23 and 13 respectively. “I'm soft-hearted and hard-headed,” is her analysis.
That's exactly how Zareen, now on the cusp of 26, approached her bout against Thailand's Jitpong Jutamas in the 2022 IBS Women's World Boxing Championships finals. Afterwards, as the opponents stood on either side of the referee, who held their wrists in preparation for the winner to be announced, both women had their other arms half raised, index fingers pointing to the sky, expecting victory.
“My opponent was very confident that she had won too. I badly wanted to win. I was raising my arm thinking, ‘God please, I should win, I should win'. And when they announced ‘blue corner' I was very happy, I was shouting, yelling I couldn't explain that emotion, kya hi bolu,” she says, lapsing into Dakhni, a khichdi of Persian, Old Urdu, Kannada, Marathi, and Telugu that's spoken in the Deccan, her homeground.
Nikhat Zareen is declared the winner of the gold medal bout at the 2022 Women's World Boxing Championships, in Istanbul, on May 19, 2022. (Image: Nikhat Zareen/Twitter)
“Then I was hugging my coach, crying. He said, ‘no beta don't cry'. He lifted me on his shoulder, I was scared I was about to fall. I was enjoying the moment, it was very emotional, I thanked everyone. It was my dream to win a gold and it didn't happen in 2019,” she adds over the phone.
“I thought to myself, ‘aaj toh jeet hi liya…der aaye durust aaye'.” Better late than never.
From dislocated shoulder injury to winning back to back medals for my country, I have come a long way and believe me it's just the beginning. The best is yet to come.😇🇮🇳🥇#howdidigofromthistothis #mytrasformationstory pic.twitter.com/pSdR1bpWyB
Tuhin Mishra, managing director and co-founder of sports marketing firm Baseline Ventures, that held her hand and helped amplify her voice during the public spat with Kom, remembers what he told her then: “When there's a flood, fish eat the ants. When the water recedes, the ants eat the fish. Your time will come. Wait for it.”
Zareen has made many sacrifices as she waited, yet the first one that comes to her mind is all the food she's given up. “Whenever I prepare for any competition I have to lose weight,” says the flyweight category boxer. “I can't have my favourite foods such as biryani, dal makhani, butter chicken and butter nan, pizzas, momos, burgers.”
She dismisses the physical pain she faces as a boxer with a “we have physios” but struggles with the other kind.View this post on Instagram“I think mental pain is very tough to handle and it's very tough to come out of that pain. As the years passed and I became experienced I started ignoring what people said about me…‘she's a Muslim she has to be in hijab'…‘boxing is a dangerous game, you will spoil your face',” she says. Zareen just kept at it, and after she won a gold at the Women's Junior and Youth World Boxing Championships in 2011, some of her naysayers began supporting her.
Before any bout, she visualises her win. “I imagine I'm throwing this punch that's landing on the opponent's face. My hand is raised, celebrating victory.”
Nikhat Zareen at the Thailand Open, in July 2019. (Image: Nikhat Zareen/Twitter)
Her coach Bhaskar Bhatt calls her a ‘scientific boxer'. “I know how to change the game,” Zareen says. “I know how to handle an aggressive opponent. If there's power in her punches I know how much distance I need to maintain and how to tackle her. My Thai opponent was stronger and taller than me and had good range and still, I managed to land punches,” she says.
As the match neared the end and she heard her coaches holler, ‘ek minute reh gaya hai' (one minute to go), she closed her eyes and thought to herself ‘chal, chal chal' (c'mon, c'mon c'mon). That last one minute swung the match in her favour.
She says she gets her fighting spirit from her parents: “I fight only in the ring, but my parents are fighting with everyone, answering ‘why did you put your daughter in boxing?' all the time.”Never apologize for being a powerful woman👸🏻#BeYourBestSelf pic.twitter.com/xFqxq7TdpS
The why wasn't really their decision. Zareen was an athlete who trained with her father until one day at the stadium she noticed that girls were participating in every sport in the ongoing Urban Games except boxing. She asked her dad and he said that's because people think women are weak. “That's when I decided I would disprove that,” she says.
She was always a free spirit, unfettered by the strict gender roles practised in her largely-Muslim neighbourhood. She wore her hair short, was always clad in jeans or trousers, and hung out mostly with boys because most girls her age stayed at home. “I've always been strong and stubborn,” she says. Two qualities that every Indian girl should imbibe.
Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.
The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.
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