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THE WOMAN
WHO FIRED A DREAM
Mother
Courage
Afternoons
in Oosavanipeta are never busy. It's the small part town called Amudalavalasa,
the kind of place that gets by by growing crops only because the monsoon
remembers to sweep over the Andhra Pradesh-Orissa border every year. Cut
off from the pulse and pull of urban India, 900 km north of Hyderabad,
nothing really happens there most afternoons. Except last Tuesday, when
you could hear a woman's heart race.
 |
| Malleshwari
(second from right) with mother Shyamala, brother Ravindra and sister
Krishna |
She was watching
a Telugu film on television when, like a message from the gods, a newsflash
flickered at the bottom of the screen. An Indian woman called Malleshwari
had won an Olympic medal in Sydney and for 45-year-old Shyamala it was
as if Providence itself had stopped by and saluted her. Her husband K.
Manohar, a policeman with the RPF, was at work while their daughter, the
television told her, had ensured that Shyamala's life work had finally
borne fruit. The mother of Olympic medal winner Malleshwari cannot stop
smiling. In the past 20 years she has initiated four of her five daughters
into weightlifting-her only son Ravindra Kumar has oddly enough shown
no interest in what is considered the most masculine of sports. Apart
from Malleshwari, two other daughters-the eldest, Narsamma and Krishna
Kumari-have also worn India colours. Madhavi, the only daughter who did
not take up lifting, laughs now, "My daughter will be the first to
train under Malli!"
Shyamala
sent her daughters into sweaty, noisy lifting halls because, she says,
"I watched my uncle's son train and I realised that it is a sport
which makes individuals strong.'' Lifting was also a sport that could
help the girls improve their lives. Manohar couldn't complete school but
got a job in the RPF because he was a capable football and volleyball
player. Shyamala got Narsamma and Malleshwari started by training them
at home with improvised weights-a bamboo with stones tied at both ends.
When Manohar was transferred to Amudalavalasa, the couple put their through
the weight-training regimen at the Ammi Naidu gym in the district headquarters
town of Srikakulam. Though weightlifting is popular in Oosavanipeta, it
has not produced international medal winners outside this family-where
the girl who dropped out of school at the age 12 got better and better
in the gym.
Shyamala
would salvage whatever she could from her household budget to give her
daughters an adequate diet and travel to the national championships with
a kerosene stove in tow, cooking for the girls. Malleshwari's career took
off after she won silver in the 1991 Senior Nationals in Ambala. When
she became world champion in the 54 kg class in 1994 and 1995, Shyamala
knew her daughter was destined for a bigger and grander stage.
-Amarnath
K. Menon
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