From a young girl looking at her brother playing Badminton to now training students, the journey has been amazing!

All of it started with my simple curiosity about the sport. As I began training under my coach, Mr. Sushanto Borah, I gradually gained interest and went on to play in various tournaments.

I come from a family already well versed with sports. My father is an international footballer and my brother, a badminton player. As a result, my family support was always enough for me to believe I can succeed.



To my disappointment, the community had starkly different views. This route to success and stability is uncommon and hence, more difficult to determine as compared to conventional routes such as engineering or MBA. Secondly, being that woman who had a dream did not play in my favor. Thankfully, my family's support covered for that too!

While I won various medals in several tournaments, I couldn’t continue due to a severe knee injury. It's been around 10 years since I played. However, I share my learnings with my students now. I train all kids irrespective of gender.

Being a woman, I understand the struggles of the inherent bias that comes in with patriarchy. While I have learnt to conquer it, I am now trying to help the girls in my academy with the same. I believe that girls are doing better than boys in almost all fields now but that sense of inferiority still exists. It’s unfortunate but it needs to dealt with. Where I train, I tell the girls that when they’re competing against boys, they first need to change their mindset. Boys have an added advantage of strength over girls. However, that needs to be taken as an opportunity for growth, not an unreachable point. They are capable but they just need to be reminded!

Menstruation is often seen as another reason to not let women indulge in sports. While this might be a struggle initially, we are trained to deal with that circumstance specifically. Personally, the urge to win and the adrenalin rush is so intense, I don’t even remember it!