On the peak of her profession, Sania Mirza wasn’t simply battling opponents on the tennis court docket—she was additionally navigating a deeply embedded societal resistance in direction of ladies who dared to dream otherwise. Her journey, like that of many feminine athletes in India, was riddled with doubts, cultural stereotypes, and relentless commentary on what a woman ought to or shouldn’t do.
In a current dialog with Masoom Minawala, Sania laid naked the remarks her household endured: “She was younger, she was enjoying, abhi kya, she’s going to exit and play in shorts with the boys? Like this can be a boys’ factor to do.” This, she defined, was the each day noise that echoed round her. However what set her story aside was not simply her perseverance, however the unwavering assist of her dad and mom—who believed in her dream even when the world couldn’t fathom it.
What shone via in her reflection was the braveness to be slightly mad, as she put it. “It takes slightly little bit of loopy to try this… most profitable folks will let you know they had been slightly loopy to consider in themselves.”
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She acknowledged that her dad and mom shielded her from a lot of the societal negativity—a lot in order that she solely understood the extent of it later in life, when she was already robust sufficient to resist it. “They protected me so nicely from it that I solely understood and heard it a lot later, when it didn’t hassle me anymore.”
In a poignant second, Sania recalled a gathering with different elite athletes—Nikhat Zareen, Saina Nehwal, and Joshna Chinappa—the place all of them realised one thing putting: regardless of coming from completely different religions, cultures, and social backgrounds, the questions and the doubts they had been requested rising up had been precisely the identical.
That’s the story of so many ladies in sport in India. No matter the place they arrive from, the message society sends is usually rooted in the identical disbelief: “The quantity of instances that I’ve heard ‘you’ll be able to’t do that’—Nahi, kaise karegi? Ye toh ladki hai—like, you know the way many instances have we heard that in our lives, proper? As younger ladies we’ve heard ‘no’ many extra instances than we’ve heard ‘sure’.
However Sania Mirza didn’t simply show these folks incorrect—she threw the entire rulebook out of the window.
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Based on counselling psychologist Srishti Vatsa, from a psychological standpoint, “this sort of extended stress impacts the nervous system. There may be extreme anxiousness, sleep is disrupted, and the physique begins to hold the trauma. There’s typically a deep sense of isolation and a lack of narrative management.”
