Dulal Karmakar may be the proudest man on earth today but he alone knows the difficulties he has faced every time when his daughter Dipa went away for tournaments or for training.
“Everytime when she was away, I missed her,” said an emotional Dulal.
He recalled how his SAI posting in Andaman and Nicobar Islands as weightlifting coach clashed with Dipa moving into the Indian camp in 2008. As a result, it was difficult for him to stay in constant touch with her. “She has been in the Indian camp since 2008. It was in the same year that I was posted to the Andamans to train athletes and I was there till 2011,” he said.
When Dipa qualified for the Rio Olympics and made an entire nation stand for her, Dulal was relieved that he had listened to his daughter in deciding her career. “All my decisions regarding her were good,” said the proud father.
Dulal, a SAI coach for weightlifting since 1987, knows that he doesn’t have to worry about Dipa’s life anymore as she has created her own path.
“Since last year, she has been training very hard and her hard work has paid off. I was confident she would qualify for Olympics and I am very happy that she stood on her expectations,” he added.
After seeing his daughter for the first time, following her historic achievement, Dulal cried like a baby. “But those were tears of joy.” However, not everything was hunky-dory for his daughter who missed out on medals in 2010 Commonwealth Games. “I was there when she was playing. After she missed out on medals, she cried for days. But after a while, she pulled herself up and motivated herself to get back to training hard,” he said.