Forty-year-old Mahananda Vishal Patil from Dhanora village at Beed in Maharashtra had never got the opportunity to play a game after she attained puberty. “When I heard there was a kabaddi tournament in the village, I went to watch it. One of the players didn’t turn up and the organisers were asking if somebody would like to play. At that moment, I knew it was my one chance to relive my childhood memories,” she says.
She hitched up her sari and got into the arena, and her team won the second place in the tournament. Women in saris playing kabbadi matches are a rare sight, especially in rural Maharashtra. But this is now changing, thanks to a string of recent tournaments organised by the women of Committee of Resource Organisation (CORO) India’s Ekal Mahila Sangathan (Single Women’s Organisation), an NGO that works for the upliftment and rights of marginalised women in Maharashtra.
