Roaring, inspiring and shining – India’s gems, the talk of the entire nation with splendid victory under their wings, P.V. Sindhu, Sakshi Malik and Dipa Karmakar with their fierceness and win-it-all spirit have put sense into the lyrics, “Who run the world – Girls!”
With all eyes etched at our television screens, gameplay we just couldn’t take our eyes off from – be it Dipa’s breathtaking Produnova vault, Malik’s admirable rescue in the final crucial moments of the bout or Sindhu (who is 21 now) – a Padmashree already at 19 with her fiery strides and consecutive shots paving her way into the finals. One shot, stride and take down at a time, these women brought India a new grandeur, added a new feat to its otherwise lackluster performance in Olympics. In other more modest, but not any less than splendid achievements, Lalita Babbar became the 2nd woman to qualify for the finals of track and field events, finishing 10th in the 3000 m steeplechase final and Aditi Ashok, an 18 year old golfer reached the finals.
Along came the appreciations, loud and thriving, for these women, these India’s daughters saved the country’s face in the Olympics. A country where you are recognized as a formidable force only if you achieve a super normal feat. A country where every progressive thought as portrayed, every modern approach as taken, every egalitarian or feminist change made is true and the exact opposite is also maddeningly true. A country where there’s powerful women in the fields of sports like Saina Nehwal, MC Mary Kom, Sania Mirza and also those women in your society who play gali cricket if the society boys allow them to or run a mile early in the morning and get back to cooking meals for their families.

Times are changing, spirits are rising and women now are no longer ready to stifle their desires. With such staggering examples of strong female athletes, slowly and steadily, change is happening. Young girls are not just aspiring to become the next Miss World, but also the next P.V. Sindhu. Generalizing these gender norms would sure be easy, to write about and to adapt. But this reversal cannot be ignored now. Female led and females’ only practices and camps, coaching and training are flourishing, schools and colleges are making female sports mandatory and young girls have started embracing these opportunities. But the stereotype that “sports is a man’s field” just got brutally broken.
These women and their lives are forever to be changed now as they entered themselves into the golden pages of Indian pride. Endorsements, various causes and movie scripts are on their way and utilizing them as the poster child for “Why women are not the second sex” is inevitable. Although a dissembler approach, we still are on board with this. As Indians, we understand how impactful media is to us and how Bollywood affects the general public. If promoting this is going to bring the change we so desperately need, so be it. The government also can’t slack off with promoting and facilitating the necessary services needed for female athletes to move forward. Even the remotest of the areas can bring out a rising star – as it is to rightly said, “A diamond can be found in a rut and just needs the right polishing to shine its brightest.”
These ferocious ladies have inspired us, shown us a future that looks bright, for both men and women, and not just in terms of sports, but as a society and modernized country as a whole. Shunning out the regressive thoughts and gendered norms and showing what these Indian daughters can do, where women – if accepted as equals can reach and what feats they can conquer. A heartwarming congratulations to these champions for taking over Rio 2016 and winning all our hearts in a smooth swoop.