“I always thought I was a brave girl who wanted to prove myself from a young age so I grabbed this opportunity and started mallakhamb. My father was a primary school teacher, but he was always progressive in his thinking. Once he saw my passion, he supported me to pursue the sport.
In the beginning, all the teachers used to come once in a while and teach and then my brothers would help me practice it. Once I started winning competitions, I got a lot of boost from it and I moved to Satara for education and mallakhamb,” Mohite recalls.
During this, she also won the Shivchatrapati Award for mallakhamb alongside her husband and fellow athlete, Vishwatej Mohite. The athlete became a coach when she followed her father’s footsteps and started as a primary school teacher.
As someone who started her mallakhamb career in the same place, she was hoping to do the same for the other girls. Who better than the Chatrapati Award winner to coach the players?
“I started with performing in front of the students. When they saw me performing, they were convinced that if our teacher could do it, we could do it as well. Looking at their enthusiasm, I put my own money to buy a rope and my guru, Sujeet sir, helped me with mattresses. That’s how I started ‘Samartha mallakhamb Sangh’ and it has been going on for 24 years. The real problem started when girls reached the menstrual cycle age and parents were not ready to send their daughters for practice.”
“Misconceptions about the menstruation cycle led to talented girls staying away from the game. I called for a parents’ meeting to clear all of their doubts and I had to come up with creative ways to convince them. Our area is known for rice cultivation. So I told them when women are working the paddy farm in almost thigh-deep water, no one takes their work away from them. Girls wear shorts only when they are practicing. They are not roaming around the village in shorts. Taking their game away from them will not help anyone. It helped me convince them and the game didn’t stop,” Mohite gets emotional talking about the hardships.
If the teacher had to deal with the parents of the school kids, Bedekar had a bigger battle on his hands. While he was training performers in the evening after finishing his day-to-day job, one of his students was also growing through the ranks and evolving as a performer, but destiny had a few other plans. “One of my students was exceptionally talented. At one time, she was a national champion, but after some time, even when she was performing her best in Mallakhamb, her mother decided to stop her practice. We tried to convince them, but nothing could change their opinions. When two of my other players won the National Championship later and won `10 lakh and `7 lakh, respectively, something changed. The mother of the performer who was banned from practicing the sport realised that her daughter could take the sport seriously, and not just as a hobby and make a career out of it. I am happy to tell you that she is back practicing again,” Bedekar says with pride.