Shadow Fighter: Sarita Devi and Her Extraordinary Journey

By Suprita Das

'A superbly researched account of one of India's most underrated boxers.' - Vijender Singh

'A well-written and fitting tribute to an unsung hero of our country.' - Abhinav Bindra

In spite of a career stretching over a decade, Laishram Sarita Devi had never quite been in the limelight as much as her fellow boxer M.C. Mary Kom. Such was the story until the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, where she lost the semi-final bout, which many, including she, believed she had won. Sarita protested against the judges' decision in the most public way possible - by refusing to accept her bronze medal. She was punished for this 'misconduct' and banned from boxing for a year. The nation, including sports legends like Sachin Tendulkar, rallied behind her and appealed on her behalf.Shadow Fighter is a chronicle of Sarita Devi's journey from a small village in Manipur to becoming one of the best boxers in Asia. A gripping biography as well as an impassioned look at the state of women's boxing in India, this is a must-read for those hoping to get a sense of the ground realities of any sport in India that is not cricket.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harper Sport India
• Release date: Aug 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9789352640126

Suprita Das

Suprita Das is a journalist with over fifteen years of experience reporting and writing on sport. She won the RedInk Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2015. Her first book, Shadow Fighter, a biography of boxer Sarita Devi, received rave reviews.

Book preview

ONE

HELL BREAKS LOOSE

30 SEPTEMBER 2014. Incheon, South Korea. 2.30 p.m. local time. The women’s 60 kg semi-final bout at the 2014 Asian Games was about to get underway. It was a weekday, but crowds turned up in large numbers. The Seonhak Gymnasium, the venue for the boxing events, with its capacity of a little over 2,000 people, was almost packed. In addition to the locals, there were Indians in the stands too. Incheon, South Korea’s third most important city after its capital Seoul and Busan, has a modest Indian population, comprising mostly students pursuing doctorates and involved with research work at Inha University.

The spectators at Seonhak had just witnessed M.C. Mary Kom, India’s most famous female boxer, outpunch Vietnam’s Bang Le Thi by a unanimous 3-0 decision. Thi, all of twenty-two, was perhaps overwhelmed to be in the ring with her idol for the very first time. She was just ten when Mary had won her first World Championship title in 2002, and in the boxing clubs of Hanoi, Thi would often hear from her senior teammates about ‘some Indian girl’. She never quite understood why the girls were so obsessed with a boxer none of them had faced before. It was only seven years later, when Thi saw Mary in action at the Asian Indoor Championships in Hanoi, she realized what made Mary Kom the phenomenon she was.

But that September afternoon in Incheon, the young flyweight boxer with delicate features got a master class in the sport from her role model.

Five-time world champion Mary, who was fighting in her first major competition since her Olympic bronze in London in August 2012, had been rusty in the earlier round. But against Le Thi, her speed and guile were way better. She peppered her younger opponent with multiple combination punches, not giving her any chance at all to gain any sort of a foothold. In the fourth and final round, the Vietnamese did manage to connect a few punches, but having lost the last three rounds, there was very little she could do.

Even though Mary’s opponent in the following day’s final, Kazakhstan’s Zhaina Shekerbekova, wasn’t going to be as easy, her confidence was now high. Mary would go for gold. No Indian female boxer had won an Asian Games gold before this.

Gold was also what Mary’s fellow Manipuri boxer, Laishram Sarita Devi, was going for. Inspite of having started their careers at the same time, the year 1999 – Sarita slightly earlier than Mary – the former had always been India’s second best. While Mary piled on the gold medals at the World Championships, Sarita, moving up and down weight categories, dominated largely at the Asian Championships.

Sarita too was a world champion, in 2006, but continued to remain the perpetual ‘bridesmaid’. In her fifteen-year-long career, this was just the second time she was representing India at a multi-disciplinary event. The first was just a month earlier, at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland. She had won silver in her comeback competition, after the birth of her son. In the last lap of her career, Sarita was finally in the limelight. And that win egged her on to be better at the Asian Games.

That Tuesday wasn’t any different from any other competition day in Sarita’s career. Things were more or less on track. Her weight was checked, after fighting in the 51 kg category for many years, she had settled into the 60 kg category now. She went through a checklist of things before the bout. The routine pre-bout medical test done. Breakfast eaten – cereal with milk and fruit on a competition day, since that was easier to digest – followed by a nap and a shower. Her gloves and a copy of the Bible packed in her bag.

Sarita was calm when she reached the venue, finishing her little revision before her bout, much like a student before a school exam. ‘I thought about my opponent for the day. I knew that if everything went according to plan, this was going to be my day. She was not going to be a very tough opponent. I always fight the bout once in my head, all four rounds, before I enter the ring. It gets me into my match mode, I try and prepare for everything that could be thrown my way. And then I am ready for the real thing,’ she later said.

While her preparation for the real thing was spot on, Sarita only wished she was in the red corner for the day. ‘I was in blue, it was not in my hands. I don’t have any superstitions as such. But red gives me energy. It makes me feel more positive.’

Boxing is a lonely sport. Once in the ring, you’re on your own. There will be crowds chanting your name, egging you on. You will glimpse your name on posters among the spectators. You will see your country’s flag displayed in the arena, and being waved by your supporters. You will have a coach, and a cutman in your corner. But the few moments after you’ve put those gloves on and are waiting to take on your opponent, there is a sense of aloofness. As former heavyweight world champion George Foreman put it, ‘This is the time that’s lonely. There’s no one truly to talk this over with. It’s lonely – more than lonely.’

Sarita slipped into her blue boxing singlet and shorts from her India tracksuit. She put on a cotton headscarf, tucked in her ponytail, and moved on to taping her fingers and wrists. Gloves on, coach Sagar Dhyal Mal strapped on her headgear, a blue helmet, as they proceeded towards the main hall with the boxing rings. Sarita’s photogenic face looked very different. She had her gumshield, helmet and game face on. Her bout was right after Mary Kom’s.

As Sarita walked past the crowd and approached the ring, the last few months of her life flashed in front of her eyes. Why was she here? What did it mean to her? Why was this competition so important for her? The return to boxing after the birth of her son, the Herculean task of getting back into shape – maternity had seen her put on 23 kg, she weighed 83 kg after the birth of her son – and amongst medals was incredible. The Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro were a year and ten months away, and being there was her mission. The pain of having missed out on London 2012, when women’s boxing made its Olympic debut, was unforgettable for Sarita. The previous month’s silver in Glasgow had almost added a spring in her step. A gold here in Incheon would not only strengthen her faith in herself, but also tell the world that just like M.C. Mary Kom, she too could make a successful comeback after giving birth to a child.

Sarita’s opponent, Park Ji-Na, was younger – twenty-five, to Sarita’s twenty-nine – and boasted of lesser international experience than the Indian. Ji-Na was taller though and, most importantly, had the backing of a charged up and vociferous home crowd. With the boxers from Tajikistan and Thailand, the gold medal favourites in the women’s lightweight category, eliminated from the competition already, Sarita’s target for gold wasn’t unrealistic at all.

Amidst cheers of ‘Ji-Na, Ji-Na’, the first of four rounds, each two minutes long, began. It didn’t matter whether Ji-Na’s punches in the rounds to come landed where she intended them or not. The crowd just kept chanting the South Korean’s name. The Indian cheering squad was a smaller bunch – some expats, the husbands of Mary Kom and Sarita, Onler K. Kom and Thoiba Singh, and Angom Lenin Meitei, who had coached the two girls in Manipur for many years.

The early battle saw both the boxers furious. Sarita, in the blue corner for this semi-final bout, had to guess a lot of her opponent’s moves, and even got a few straight punches on the face. Known to be a heavy puncher, the Indian looked tired, as all three judges marked in favour of Ji-Na, she led 10-9.

And that gave her confidence in the second round. The powerful Ji-Na used left-hand jabs directed at her opponent, but by now Sarita had warmed up. The veteran was moving better on her feet, as Ji-Na took some punches, ducked the others. A flurry of punches landed on her in the last few seconds and saw the second round go in Sarita’s favour. But with a split decision among the judges, it was the home boxer who still held a two point lead.

Boxing’s new rules, implemented in the year 2013, didn’t allow the boxer, or spectators, to see points between rounds, which left the contestants in the dark about where they stood. Till the London Olympics, amateur boxing used a computerized scoring system, where the only way the jury judged a boxer was on the basis of the number of punches landed. But this method of scoring came in for a lot of criticism in 2012, and a lot of bouts at the Olympics were even alleged to have been rigged. That made Dr Ching-Kuo Wu, president of the Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA), replace it the following year with the ten-point system that was used in professional boxing. The assigned judges for the bout, scored on a ten-point scale. Most rounds ended with the score at 10-9, with the more dominant boxer getting ten points, the other getting nine. According to Dr Wu, it would be ‘impossible to manipulate’ bouts with this system. ‘The ten-point system is comprehensive, with the style and the fighting spirit of the boxer also scored,’ he said. ‘At the moment, there is no way to judge amateur boxers as performers showing their style. Why is Muhammad Ali the greatest? Because of his style.’

The shift to the ten-point system was one of Wu’s moves to make amateur boxing as close as possible to professional, in order to get more eyeballs and rake in more money.

But the system was flawed, and most certainly not manipulation-proof. At its heart, boxing is a subjective sport. Of its scoring criterion – clean punching, effective aggression, ring generalship and defence – the last two were particularly ambiguous. In a bout that had a lot of close punching, for instance, the scoring patterns were bound to be varied, and the verdict, often surprising. And no matter how qualified a judge was, because of the sport’s subjective nature, the verdict could be error-prone sometimes. But now with no visible scores as such, the situation became even more tricky. The winner at the end of each round was announced, yes, but it didn’t allow the boxer to plan their strategy for the next round. The boxer couldn’t see on a board in front of them what the situation of a bout was at any given time. Needless to say, this kind of subjectivity and unpredictability led to heartburn very often.

In the third round of their semi-final, Sarita was all over Ji-Na. An explosion of punches directed at her chin and nose left the South Korean flustered. Sarita hammered away like her life depended on this round. Ji-Na would be only too pleased for the round to get over, that too, shockingly, as the winner. Two of the three judges scored in her favour, as she headed into the final round, still in the lead.

Given her dominance in the last two rounds, and complete cluelessness about the fact that the last round was a must win for her, Sarita continued to fight. Her punching from the third round possibly left her a bit exhausted, as Ji-Na tried to hold her on as much as possible. With ten seconds to go, and neither boxer punching, the tension was evident on the sides of the ring, on the faces of the coaches of the two countries. Ji-Na finally hooked, but it wasn’t so clean, and the torrid semi-final bout finally came to an end.

Soon after, the referee held both boxers’ hands on either side, as the crowd and officials at the venue, and millions watching the proceedings back home in India on television, waited for the verdict. Both boxers believed they’d fought well, and looked confident.

What happened next remains etched as a scar in the history of women’s boxing. The referee held Ji-Na’s right hand up, announcing her as the winner of the semi-final bout.

Sarita, on the referee’s right, had lost the bout 39-37, and would have to settle for bronze. The Korean crowds went berserk. Ji-Na screamed out in ecstacy, and perhaps shock too, thumping her clenched fist on her chest, as she took a round of the ring.

But amidst the cheering of the Koreans in that boxing arena, one thing was loud enough and clear: the booing from the non-Koreans in the crowd. Everyone who witnessed what had just happened knew it was wrong. Sarita Devi, the clear winner of the bout, had actually lost it. It was the end of her Asian Games campaign, with a bronze to her name.

The winner announcement was just the start of an incredibly dramatic sequence of events over the next few hours that made Sarita and her semi-final bout the talking point of the Games for months to come.

First, her husband, Thoiba, rushed towards the ring, to protest against the evidently biased verdict his wife was offered. ‘What have you done? You’ve killed boxing, killed it in front of everyone,’ he screamed, pointing fingers towards the judges. He was rushed away from the ring. A scuffle with security officials followed, after which he was sent where he needed to be: with his wife.

For Sarita, the initial shock had translated into tears. She broke down – inconsolably. She held her husband’s hand, buried her head into his shoulders and exited the arena. Cameras, microphones, dictaphones, cellphones surrounded her, even as a solitary Indian Olympic Association (IOA) official kept asking the press to move away so that the boxer could make her way back to the players’ arena a few feet away. But Sarita, having gone through the most horrific experience of her professional life, felt the need to speak out.

‘There is a lot of pain we go through when we train. But the pain of a loss is always worse,’ she said later. ‘So when the loss is a fake one, can you imagine what that pain is like?’

‘I am sad,’ she said. ‘I left my little baby back home, so far away from me, and worked so hard to get here. How could they finish everything just like that in a minute?’ Tears continued to roll down her cheeks. ‘I don’t know what god is punishing me for. This shouldn’t happen to anyone who makes so many sacrifices. No athlete from any country in the world should have to go through this.’ Wiping her tears and sweat with the white towel draped around her shoulders, Sarita was escorted away to the players’ warm-up area by her teammate M.C. Mary Kom.

For India’s most celebrated boxer, it was a tight situation to be in. Ideally, Mary Kom would have liked to head back to the Athletes’ Village and relax before her final bout the following day. But she had to console Sarita and talk to the international press about what just happened. Her victory earlier in the day had fizzled out from everyone’s memory. ‘If it was one or two points, we could have understood. But this was such a one-sided bout’ is just about all she managed to say. What added to the confusion was the utter ambiguity over what exactly needed to be done at that point. Till date, there is no clarity over whether it is even possible to lodge a protest in a situation such as Sarita’s and, if so, what is the way to go about it.

Meanwhile, inside the boxing arena, in the bantamweight men’s quarter-final, Mongolia’s Tugstsogt Nyambayar seemed to have convincingly beaten his South Korean opponent, Sangmyeong Ham. Once again, miraculously, the local boxer was awarded the bout 3-0. Angry crowds threw water bottles inside the boxing ring. The Mongolians stormed out of the arena immediately and worked towards lodging a protest.

Meanwhile, India’s sports officials, of various ages and designations, continued to enjoy the action inside, oblivious of the mayhem outside. ‘They’re here to warm the seats only, that’s all they’re doing inside,’ an infuriated Thoiba was heard shouting, as he ran around with paper and