When Nikhat Zareen stepped out of the haze of lockdowns in March last year for her first tournament, she felt happy and relieved. At the Bosphorus boxing event in Istanbul, she could see other people and she had forgotten what that felt like amid the pandemic. “I felt like I had given up boxing only, with no competitions or camps. When I got to Istanbul, I was so excited,” she remembers.
But she got a tough draw, pitted against one former World Championship medallist after another on each of the competition days. “I had been sitting at home for so long, I thought I might as well play some world champions now,” she says, highlighting a dry sense of humour. She ended with a bronze medal, after upsetting former world champions Ekaterina Paltceva and Nazym Kyzaibay among others.
Almost a year later, last month, Zareen won the title at the Strandja Memorial in Sofia, Bulgaria, beating another former World Championship medallist, Ukraine’s Tetiana Kob, in the final.
Zareen had won the title before, in 2019, but she feels she had tougher opponents this time. Among them was Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Busenaz Cakiroglu in the semifinals, who had beaten the Indian at Istanbul the previous year. “It’s not about winning or losing. It’s about winning and learning,” says Zareen. “When I saw that I was facing this girl again, I said damn… But I did not repeat the Istanbul mistakes and did not let her play her game.”
At the end of the first round, her coach told Zareen that the score was 3-2 and she wanted to know who was at 3. “I still didn’t believe that they gave me 3. I thought she must have won the bout. She has so many medals and has a reputation…”
Both boxers tried dominating the bout in the next round, threw in combinations and both got warnings. When the bell rang, she asked her coach the score and he said 4-1. “I still thought they gave her four. It was an intense bout in which I didn’t know who was landing punches and who was getting hit. I had won two (rounds) and told myself, let me give it my best. Is jaan ko kahan leker jana hai (loosely translates to: what do I need to save my energy for)?”
The Strandja title augurs well for Zareen who has a busy year coming up. There are a lot of big events to compete in, and lots of competitions to qualify for. She has already qualified for the World Championships in Istanbul in May. She is currently part of the selection trials in Delhi for the Asian Games 2022, which will be followed by preparation for the World Championships and then the Commonwealth Games trials in June. It’s a relentless cycle leading up to the Paris Olympics in 2024, which is Zareen’s ultimate goal.
“I always believed before, now or in the future, whatever happens is for a good reason. If it’s in your destiny, you will get it. My job is to work hard. I am not focusing on a medal in Paris. I want to look at one step at a time rather than focusing on the staircase,” says the 25-year-old from Nizamabad, Telangana.
Paris is significant for another reason—Zareen was not part of the Tokyo contingent. An entire drama played out prior to that Olympics when the boxing federation decided to send Mary Kom for the Olympic qualifications. But Zareen, who fights in the same flyweight (48-51 kg) category, wrote to the sports minister asking for a fair trial. The trial fight turned out to be one-sided with Kom winning comfortably, but Zareen came out of the episode as a strong athletes’ voice, not willing to back down easily.
The same gumption shows in her interaction with the world through social media. She is fairly active on Instagram because of her affinity to photographs, getting clicked, and making reels. It is also a way to handle stress and acts as a distraction, but she gets adverse comments from people who says she should be in a purdah as a Muslim woman.
It’s a repeat of what Zareen went through as a young girl picking up what is predominantly considered a male domain, boxing. People would tell her father, Jameel Ahmed, that he should not let her box as she would get hit on the face and ruin her chances of a marriage or that wearing shorts was not allowed in Islam.
“But my father never involved me in those conversations,” says Zareen who is one of Jameel’s four daughters. “You train and I will worry about the rest, he said. I am lucky to have such a father. He always said you are not a child and you know better what is good for you. I don’t need to tell you. I have faith in you, that’s what my dad said. When your parents support you blindly, then it’s our duty to make them proud.”
If she feels anger or uses boxing as a means to channel that rage, she does not admit it. Everyone has their own way, she says, and as a boxer she likes to be calm in the ring. “Before competition, I have a motive to be calm. I lose weight too (boxers often drastically drop kilos before a competition so they fit in their designated weight category) when I don’t eat on time. My normal diet reduces to half, so there is irritation.”
“But if you are calm, then you can focus. If your mind is not steady, your body is not going to listen to it. Some like to be aggressive, some like to dance… I will always look calm, even if the opponent uses dirty tricks.”
The former junior world champion says nothing changed much with the Mary Kom episode except that it made Zareen wiser and harder-working as an athlete. As someone who was told as a child that boxing is for men, she sees validation of her career choice all around. “When Mary Kom won a medal at the (London 2012) Olympics, people took women’s boxing seriously. In Tokyo, Lovlina Borgohain won a medal. It’s a big slap for people who think boxing is for men.”
Also read: Morning Stars | Lovlina Borgohain: Sting like a bee, sleep like a baby
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