A Woman Wrestler Speaks | Sagari Chhabra

As far as I can remember

girls were protected

from the eyes of Man;

woe betide should someone desire you;

remain invisible within

the four corners of your home,

hone your domestic skills,

for the way to a man’s heart

is through his stomach.

While it’s hard to digest,

a woman is just a spare rib

of a man’s life,

it’s for him to strive,

for you to adjust,

it always has, and will remain thus.

 

One day something

snapped deep within,

I walked to the sand pit

and started to wrestle,

revelling in the physical hustle,

pitting muscle against muscle.

The secret journeys brought in

a forbidden pleasure,

that had no measure;

sweating and toiling through

ligament damage, sprain and bruise,

winning the Olympic gold was no cruise.

 

When I stood on the victory stand,

no one prepared me for

the federation chief’s slimy hands;

no one warned me

he was a serial predator

and that when we would get together

to protest on the streets,

he would send the police at night,

to remove us from public sight.

 

We women sweat to win,

while men in power, blithely sin.

We sit in the blazing sun,

asking one and all,

to forestall

this exercise of abuse,

instead use

your power to restore,

morality, decency and ethics

in public mores once more.

 

You bask in our medallion fame

but is it not a crying shame,

to pick on our bodies

and then to bodily pick us up?

Yet we will not succumb;

history will record us

not as willing prey

but as the real winners of the day.

This is the truth;

wrestle with it.

Sagari Chhabra
13 May ‘23