It’s a bout time for wrestler Antim Panghal, says Rudraneil Sengupta

Sitting on a charpoy in the small courtyard of a raw-cement house in Hisar, Haryana, I met the future of Indian wrestling. Her hair cut to the nape, she was dressed in frayed track pants and a muscle T-shirt, her crumpled ear a classic sign of time in the ring.

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Beside her, the family’s large buffalo ate at its trough. Behind her, a gunny sack kept a kitchen window closed to flies.

Antim Panghal, 18, is bashful to the point of being timid. Polite and petite, with a winning smile, one could almost call her dainty. But on the mat, she is a force of nature; 5’4” of pure explosive power.

During the recent qualification trials in Delhi for the Asian Wrestling Championships, she mowed down her opponents with an impassive face. Her speed was breathtaking. Her skill and wrestling smarts are extraordinary for her age. The explosive power she generated for every move, defensive or offensive, was like watching the cannon of a military tank fire and recoil.

Panghal, it was clear, was ready for her senior debut on the big stage, even though she hasn’t played in a senior national championship yet. At the Asian championships that concluded on Friday she bagged silver, with an imperious run to the final that only ended at the hands of the 2021 world champion, Japan’s Akari Fujinami.

Wrestling is considered the manliest of sports in India; there are few others where women have to push through glass ceiling in quite the same way. Still, there has been a burst of female talent in recent years, and it has made this a sport rife with contradiction.

Haryana, one of India’s least progressive states when it comes to gender indices, took the lead in training girls in wrestling. India’s medals tally in this field owes much to the women from this state. And now a new star has arrived, in the form of a woman named Antim , Hindi for Final , because her parents did not want another girl after their fourth.

In another contradiction, Panghal has had her parents’ full support through her journey. It’s not that they don’t love their girls. It’s that they worry. “Can you imagine the money involved in getting four daughters married?” her mother Krishna Kumari says. “It could see us thrown out onto the streets.” For the same reason, another woman on the national squad is named Bhateri (Hindi for Enough).

“My parents may not have wanted me before I was born, but once I was here, I have felt nothing but supported and loved. They have done everything for me,” Panghal says. This includes selling their home and farm in Bhagana, a village 25 km from where they live now, to shift to a derelict settlement on barren land near Hisar city, so that their young wrestler could attend an akhada open to girls.

Their home is centered on the lives of its women, who are an energetic and upbeat group led by an indefatigable and jovial mother; her husband, Ram Niwas Panghal, a farmer, offers unstinting support.

Antim took up wrestling on the advice of her sister Sarita Panghal, who loved kabaddi but could not make much headway in the field because there weren’t enough facilities or teammates in her district. Sarita recognised Antim’s gift of athleticism early on, and encouraged her to pick an individual sport. Now she is one of the finest wrestlers in the country; its first female wrestler to win at the under-20 world championship, in 2022; and a woman who almost defeated Vinesh Phogat, India’s most accomplished wrestler, at a trial for a spot on the Commonwealth Games team last year.

This will be a big couple of years for Antim Panghal — the Asian championships will be followed by the World Wrestling Championships, in September; then the Asian Games, in September-October, and next year, of course, loom the Paris Olympics. All that in a weight category where she must overcome the best of the best, Phogat, just to qualify.

Is she excited, nervous, worried? “Outside the mat, I am quiet, scared even,” Panghal says. “But on the mat, all that is gone. I just know I have to fight. I have to keep attacking. I have to win.”