What makes a world champion? “Boxer has to be smart. Boxer has to be strong. But main is will. Main is will.” Read 1843mag's interview with Mary Kom, as she competes at Tokyo2020. From the archive
, is the verb Mary Kom uses. She could be referring to a tournament, “when I played national”, her stance, “I play southpaw”, or her weight category, “I must play in 51kg in the Olympics.” But there is something deeper when Kom says it. Childbirth and child-rearing, that is life. Lifting yourself out of poverty, fulfilling the duties of a wife, a daughter, an eldest sister, that is life. Boxing is so much; but still it is play.
“He tries to make me angry,” she says later, “but I have to be cool.” Her grimace is hidden by her white gumshield. You can feel her burn; it’s been 80 minutes now., come Mary, come.” This is a “specific training” session, devoted to feints and combination punches. He’s making her chase him, holding up his pad for her to pull out another series of rifling combination punches, which she does with sharp yelp-like breaths.
The gym is on the premises of an erstwhile palace in Patiala, Punjab, now India’s national sports institute. In its grounds the hedges are trim, the trees are labelled with numbers, and the kerb is painted in zebra stripes, but beneath the order it is still India, no country for athletes. Kom will return to shared accommodation in a hostel, where she will boil vegetables with fermented fish on her portable stove, because the mess food can leave her with indigestion.
The girl would go on to win five world championships. Five in a row, like Borg or Federer at Wimbledon. Two of these five she won after giving birth to twin boys. In a nation bereft of athletic achievement, she ought to be a household name. But most Indians have never heard of her. “Mary?”, people say—Mary who? Some can manage a guess at her sport: “Archery, no, wrestling, wait… weightlifting?”
These perks are needed. To make a living she must rely on state awards and the salary from a sports-quota position with the Manipur police. Offered the designation of constable on winning her first world championship, she declined it. A few years later she accepted the post of sub-inspector, on a monthly salary of 8,500 rupees . Following two promotions and a landmark government pay-scale revision, she still only draws 31,000 rupees a month , a trifle in inflationary times.
For the girls, especially, Mary is an inspiration; and because she is home for a few days, there is to be a minor presentation ceremony. They will receive training gear. The sports ministry donates these packs, 25 annually. By the time they reach the academy, pilfering has reduced it to about 18. At Christmas 2006, returning home from Onler’s village in Samulamlan Block, they received a series of phone calls and texts, saying that Onler’s father had been called out of the house by a group of men, taken a short distance away, and shot in the head at point-blank range. He was a parson and the village chief. There was no demand, no warning, no apparent motive. They had left him only hours earlier, and the mood was festive.
A few weeks after the funeral, Mary felt unwell. At the clinic, the doctor told the couple that she had conceived. “My mind was blowing!” Onler says. “It was something like a miracle. I give up all the dirty thoughts I had for leaving the house.” His father too had been a twin. For dinner Mary, the domestic provider, cooks in the Kom style: beef fry, pork with broccoli, fish and roe flavoured with desiccated citrus peels, and boiled mustard leaves. She stands by the table, listening, as a guest, a friend of theirs, says that his new tractor was captured a few hours ago by a ug for “tax collection”. Nainai, slung in a shawl, is strapped to Mary’s back; Rengpa has exhausted himself to sleep.
So Tonpa Kom tells his life story, as a woodcutter, a fisherman, a butcher and a charcoal burner. At one point he tried a business bringing cows from faraway to sell to villagers locally; when he had saved some money, he bought a cow and a cart, which he would hire out. Akham Kom, washing dishes by the well, adds that she wove shawls to boost their income. Mary helped, and also worked in the fields with her parents.
In March she was in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, for the Asian women’s boxing championships. Her opponent in the final was Ren Cancan of China. “She is very clever,” Kom says, which is the highest praise she bestows upon a boxer, though here it comes with an edge. Cancan is 5ft 6in, and the reigning 51kg world champion. The first time Mary fought in this category, in the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, she met Cancan in the semi-final and lost 7-11.
As a preparation for the Olympic qualifiers in May, this was excellent—though not quite enough. In her new weight category she had fought the Asians, but never faced the Europeans. What about Nicola herself? “She is OK, quite good. She is quite defensive, she has a fast jab. Europeans are not so clever as Asians. I think I will beat her.” She points to her head with a playful gleam. “I have her in my mind now.”
This sentiment could be attacked by the more extreme Manipuri insurgents. But if Mary retires as an Olympic gold-medallist, she knows her life will be forever changed; and with it, a little bit, her country’s standing in the world.fights is not easy to track down. The national broadcaster Doordarshan, private sports channels, her own agents, Olympic Gold Quest – nobody can supply it.
Even by the standards of pinweights, Mary is so quick that judges regard her bouts as about the hardest task in the women’s game. At Podolsk, her opponent is a Korean . To watch Mary, 22 years old and 46kg light, is to watch the physical equivalent of a raconteur of irrepressible wit and repartee. It feels like pugilism.
In Barbados, five years later, women’s boxing has come on. The referee is a woman; the number of rounds has increased from three to four, and Mary herself has had to move up to flyweight, 48kg, the new lightest category. For once she is taller than her opponent, a Romanian, whom, she recalls dismissively, she has defeated twice before. By this stage, she says, she is a smart boxer, an all-round boxer, she can dance around her opponent and study her for a whole round if required.
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