Puja Jat’s life had never been easy, especially since she lost her mother at ten and had to handle her home and two younger brothers. She had no money for shoes or diet.
Blockbuster Bollywood flick ‘Dangal’ is considered a landmark movie for women’s wrestling in India and the story of a 20-year-old woman wrestler Puja Jat from Madhya Pradesh is no different from the movie script.
The young wrestler who has won bronze medals already in Junior Asia and Junior World championship is now heading to Oslo in Norway for World Seniors’ Wrestling event that will take place in the first week of October. She has around a dozen medals from state and national level competitions in her kitty.
A resident of small village Bacchkhal in Dewas, Puja’s life never had been easy especially since she lost her mother at ten and had to handle her home and two younger brothers. Interestingly Puja had taken up 100 m sprint in school and also represented her school in 2014 and 2015. She used to visit nearby Khategaon for practice but failed to reach the desired targets due to her short height and ankle pain.
“My sports teacher, Yogesh Jani, then asked me to shun sprint. As I belonged to Jat community who are strongly built naturally, he advised me to try wrestling,” said Puja. The teacher stated teaching her the nuances of the game on his mobile phone and taught her the basic daav-pench of wrestling, recounted the wrestler.
Besides her domestic responsibilities and weak economic background, Puja did not allow things to extinguish her dreams. Her farmer father with two-acre land had little resources but he never stopped his daughter from dreaming big.
Besides the above obstacles, Puja had to put up with orthodox voices from her community. “Locals advised my father against putting a girl into a ‘dangerous’ sport like wrestling which can injure me. They also asked him to not send me out of home,” recounted Puja.
However, her father Premnarayan Jat, who was a state-level Kabaddi player once, knew the value of sports and did not listen to the naysayers. The father and her brothers started taking care of the home as Puja went around for training. Earlier, Puja used to wake up at 4 am and complete domestic chores, before heading out to Khategaon for training.
As none helped her out in early days, village sarpanch Laxminarayan Gora came forward to bear all expenses regarding Puja’s travels and training. “I did not even have proper shoes and it was the sarpanch who bought me a pair,” recounted Puja, adding that he helped her maintain her wrestler diet too. Laxminarayan said,”I was a weightlifter who took part in Asian championship held in Indore in 1986 but could not go for selections in Chandigarh later. I had seen a passion in the girl as she used to run three km early morning to be a sprinter. I am living my unfulfilled dream through this girl. Initially I had taken her to Malhar Ashram in Indore and after couple of months, the coach Ved Prakash asked me to take her to Haryana. I took her to Shubhas Chandra Bose Academy in Gohana (Haryana) which produced two Olympic wrestlers. She trained there for three months and never looked back.”
The sarpanch affirmed that the locals initially objected to her wrestling but now she has become a proud daughter for the region. “I am now taking a local girl for boxing and a local boy for powerlifting training in Haryana,” he added.
In her first-ever match at Ujjain, an unskilled Puja put up a spirted fight against Shivangi Panwar who was a national-level wrestler and the powerful performance earned her praise from one officer of MP Sports Department. He told her sports teacher that the girl had a bright future in wrestling and asked him to enroll her in MP Wrestling Academy in Bhopal.
She joined the academy but later she had to stop training due to a ligament tear. However, with more training, she earned a name for herself nationally. Now married to wrestling coach Virendra Gulia, a native of Haryana who trains wrestlers at a private academy in Ujjain, Puja is training at Ujjain before the national camp happens at Lucknow.
“I train with her and do not allow anyone to train with her so that she doesn’t suffer any injury ahead of the big tournament,” Gulia told News18, affirming that an Olympic medal is the ultimate dream for the couple.
Puja, who works in a bank now, says wrestling remains a costly affair as she has to spend around Rs 30,000 – 40,000 a month on diet and travels. However, as she has a job and support of her husband, things are now much easier for her.
