Seema Rao, India’s first and only woman commando trainer, still vividly remembers the scarred, leering face of the man who loomed over her, ready to assault.

Sunitha Krishnan, co-founder of an NGO that has saved 20,000 lives who were forced into prostitution, says she is still seething with anger from the crime she survived as a kid and the injustices that continue to befall women. Arunima Sinha, the world’s first female amputee to climb the Mount Everest, recalls the naysayers who didn’t believe she would make it after she lost a leg in an accident.

All three of them not only refused to let these traumatic incidents define them, but also did not let it deter them. In fact, it galvanised them to take on the behemoths of patriarchy and debunk norms to become the trailblazers that they are today.

Seema Rao

Seema had been learning combat for over a year when three men tried to assault her, passing lewd comments, after her routine morning practice session with her husband at Girgaon, Mumbai. It’s your fight and you have to tackle this on your own, her husband told her, before leaving her alone to fight the jeering men. Though terrified, she fought them all by herself, even dodging a knife attack in the process. “I felt an immense feeling of eventually being in control and not someone who can get controlled by others,” she recounts.

There was no turning back from then. Seema has spent the last 20 years training over 20,000 soldiers of the Indian forces in close-quarter battle, as a service to the country, without any compensation. A 7th-degree black belt holder in military martial arts, she was awarded the Nari Shakti Puraskar 2019, which is the highest civilian honour for women in India.

Sunitha Krishnan

Sunitha was 15 when she was assaulted by eight men. Today, she vehemently fights against human trafficking through Prajwala, her NGO, and was awarded the ‘Padma Shri’ in 2016 in recognition of her work.

“I made a choice to fight organised crime because I survived a crime myself, not an organised crime, but a singular crime, which made me feel very angry and one of my inspirations is my anger...(I have been) seething with anger for the last 30 years,” she says.

Her efforts gets bolstered when she gets public support. A 75-year-old stranger turned up at her office last year, donating his entire pension amount, saying he believed in her and the work she does. “You can’t imagine the amount of strength that gave me. It was worth fighting all the battles then,” she says, her voice thick with emotion.

Arunima Sinha

Arunima lost one of her legs when she was thrown off a moving train in 2011 while trying to resist thieves. Just two years later, she became the world’s first female amputee to climb Mount Everest.

“Apart from the physical inhibitions of climbing the mountain on a prosthetic leg, there were mental inhibitions as well because people consider adventure a man’s game,” she says, emphasising on how difficult it is for women to steer clear of ingrained social conventions.

She also recently became the first female amputee to climb Mount Vinson, the highest peak of Antarctica, the latest in her total of seven world records. In 2015, Arunima was conferred the Padma Shri.

“I want women to be able to fix their own bikes, be it fixing a puncture or changing the tyres. Women should be self-dependent. They should be able to do it all themselves,” she says. She also has her eyes set on her dream project of starting a sports academy.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW