Fight Like A Girl

‘I love to fight’ quipped Rupali when I met this cheerful 13 year old girl during one of my visits to Kolkata. It was a joy to interact with her. Brimming with life, Rupali seems to be carrying the sun in her heart, sharing the light with everyone she meets!

As we spoke, Rupali’s story started unfolding. In the fringes of Kolkata city, in the narrow cramped spaces between the dilapidated buildings of Kolkata Port Trust (KPT) grew informal settlements born out of the desperate need for survival of the city’s impoverished. In one such urban slum lived Rupali.

Her journey is akin to most slum dwellers in India. A one room kutcha makeshift settlement made of plastic and bamboo is what Rupali calls her home; where she lives with her four siblings and both her parents. It is in this one room itself that they cook, eat, study, pray and live. Her father who once was a daily wage labourer became home bound as an accident left him bedridden. Rupali’s mother who works as a domestic help, earns a meagre Rs.2500 and is the sole earner for the family. Poverty makes living extremely hard as generally, the family survives on only one meal a day.

This is the norm for most people in Rupali’s slum. In this kind of a context, childhood often gets engulfed by violence, abuse and exploitation leaving children forever scarred.

In a bid to provide an emotional outlet and to enable a better life for children living in such disadvantaged situations, CRY initiated its ‘Sports For Change’ programme with children of this colony. On the insistence and encouragement from her father, Rupali too joined this initiative and enrolled for the Karate classes run under this intervention.

What began so casually soon turned out to be a way for Rupali to meet her destiny. She took to Karate like a duck to water and after just 6 months of training started showing glimpses of her talent by winning a number of local tournaments. This further energised her and soon, Karate became the most important thing in her life. The resoluteness and resilience that Rupali’s circumstances had ingrained in her turned out to be her biggest strength as she navigated this new path.

From refusing to bow down to the sly remarks of her neighbours who mocked Rupali for wearing shorts, and sporting short hair, to turning a deaf ear to the intimidation that one day her face will be broken by a punch and she will never get married, Rupali forged ahead.

As she started exceling in the sport, it also spiraled to the other parts of her life enabling her to take a stand against social evils. Using her Karate prowess, she successfully stood up to a group of older boys who jeered at her and her friends and intimidated them. She is clear that her skills and strength at Karate should be deployed only to stand up to bullying or to fight against injustice meted to her and her loved ones.

A big challenge for Rupali and most other sportspeople from marginalised circumstance is the deficit in nutrition caused by food scarcity. Most days she goes for training eating only fermented rice or only a roti and the mid-day meal provided at school. However, CRY is raising resources with the support of a few good samaritans to cater to Rupali’s nutrition needs.

Her hard work and dedication is not going unrewarded. Rupali has participated in state level and national karate tournaments winning many medals along the way. But the pivotal moment came when she won gold at the ‘6th International Karate Championship in July 2022 at the Netaji Indoor Stadium, Kolkata’. Also, recently, she clinched a gold medal at the 9th West Bengal State Wushu Championship held at Sports Authority Of India helping her secure a position to participate in the Government of India’s Khelo India National Level Championship.

Presently, a proud holder of the green belt, Rupali is well on her path to achieving the coveted black belt. She aspires to win a gold medal for India at the Olympics one day and also become a Karate coach for underprivileged girls like her.

I know there is still a long road ahead of Rupali. There are many battles to be fought. But with that fighting spirit and optimism, I am confident that Rupali will make her way with courage and grace. And I know I will carry Rupali’s warm smile and the slice of sunshine she shared with me, wherever I go!

Written By:
Soha Moitra
Regional Director
Child Rights and You