The Kom-back kid

Why Mary is a beacon of true grit

For Mary Kom, a record-breaking sixth gold medal in the recently concluded Women's World Championships marks but another milestone in her extraordinary career. Among her many achievements are a bronze medal in the 2012 Olympics and a gold medal at the 2014 Incheon Asian games — the first Indian woman boxer to do so. Indeed, Kom’s latest victory represents a triumph on many levels: Over the constrictions of identity, against gender prejudice, and, above all, over poverty. Thanks to a successful biopic, the details of Ms Kom’s life are well known to the Indian movie-going public. The melodramatic portrayal of a determined and talented young woman captured on celluloid — a signature Sanjay Leela Bhansali production — somewhat diminishes the extraordinary Kom’s story, however. Having been made in 2014, it could not have captured the astonishing fact that Ms Kom won her latest title having not qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics, a predicament that would have disheartened most sportspeople in their thirties, an age when many hang up their gloves.

Tennis star Serena Williams is feted around the world for reaching two Grand Slam finals after giving birth to a daughter at age 36 and winning an Australian Open when she was several weeks pregnant. Kom’s achievements are no less amazing: A 36-year-old mother of three, she defeated her 22-year-old Ukrainian opponent without apparently breaking a sweat. 

“Age is secondary,” she told reporters in her post-match interviews. Williams and her sister Venus battled entrenched racism, both in the US and within the tennis world, to reach the pinnacle of the sport. Kom too battled racism, coming from Manipur, one of India’s eight north-eastern states, whose denizens suffer a particularly ugly form of chauvinism in mainland India (recall their panicked exodus from Bengaluru, Chennai and Pune in 2012).

Kom also battled a virulent form of sexism. Had she chosen the more conventional sports such as athletics, cricket, hockey or even chess, her struggles might have been marginally easier. Instead, she chose the quintessential “guy” sport, boxing, inspired by fellow Manipurian Dingko Singh, gold medallist at the 1998 Asian Games, suffering the derision of her peers. It speaks volumes that she had to keep her vocation secret from her father, who feared boxing would disfigure her face and ruin her marriage prospects (he changed his mind when his daughter went from one success to another). Unlike the now fabulously rich Williams, Kom lacked the wherewithal to continue her career following motherhood — she had to take a three-year hiatus after she married to bring up two children. This at age 22, when most sportspeople are rising in their careers.

And most of all, she battled poverty. Her parents eked out a precarious living as tenant farmers in jhum (slash and burn) fields. The frugal instincts honed from those years have not left her. Asked how difficult it is to switch between the 48 kg and 51 kg categories, she said it was easier to stay at the lower weight because it required a day’s workout to lose weight; to attain the higher weight, she explained, was tougher because she “had to eat a lot”.

Two comebacks — the first a medal-studded one, which included her fourth World Boxing Championship gold in 2008 and an Olympic bronze, and the second a record-breaking one after her Olympic qualification failure — at relatively late ages are a tribute to Kom’s iron determination against formidable odds. As she begins training for the Tokyo Olympics, she, as much as any sportsperson around the world, remains a beacon of true grit.