30-year-old software engineer Chetna Sharma is not afraid of eve teasing now, as she can very well answer back the road-side romeos.
Chetna Sharma and her fitness trainer husband Nayanjyoti Bora sit across a table and interlock their palms, they morph once again into students and coach, their relationship of 12 years. The one that made her sprout the kind of biceps that automatically enforce social distance in Guwahati’s shady pockets. Holding hands isn't always a romantic gesture for this newly married couple from Assam.
“Men don't tease me anymore,” says Sharma. “Now, I get a lot of respect,” says the chirpy, sportswear-preferring techie who is among a handful of women athletes in arm-wrestling, the earthy combat sport that has only recently been vaccinated with prokabaddi-like glamour, replete with celebrity status, uniformed female referees, sponsored Night tickets though not as much cash.
Making an unforgettable memory in college canteens, arm wrestling has now created a niche in this competitive world. Almost 40 years old Indian Arm Wrestling Federation, which has affiliated associations in 28 states, the sport has now spawned emerging hubs such as Punjab, MP, Haryana, Mizoram, Manipur and Kerala, some of which boast gyms in which women sculpt their “dominant hands” by arm-wrestling with male strangers.
Pro-Panja League, a professional arm wrestling league’s first tournament on February 29 last year in Delhi.
“The sport originated in India when Eugene Sandow, father of bodybuilding, came to Mumbat in 1904 on the invitation of Dhunjibhai Boman}! for the first time,” says actor Parvin Dabas,a Parsi man who, along with wife Preeti Jhangiani, owns the company that decided to organise PPL on realising that his other passion; Mixed Martial Arts did not have a greater scope in India.
