COIMBATORE: Six months ago, Masilamani, 40, who works as a domestic help for two families in Coimbatore, hit the gym after work to lose weight, motivated by one of her employers. Last month, she won the gold medal at the Tamil Nadu Powerlifting Association's state-level competition in Trichy with a deadlift of 77.5kg in the 63kg category. And her 17-year-old daughter Dharani won the bronze in the 47kg category with a lift of 72.5kg.
Now the mother and daughter have set their sights on the south India competition organised by the Tamil Nadu Powerlifting Association in Chennai from September 14 to 19.
"Initially, my family members and some of my friends and neighbours laughed at me. Now, they appreciate me," says Masilamani, who lives with her husband Ramesh and daughter at Ramanujam Nagar near Kuniyamuthur in Coimbatore. Her older daughter Dharshini, 19, is married and lives elsewhere.
Masilamani credits gym owner-cumtrainer C Sivakumar, an Asian gold medallist in powerlifting, for her turnaround. “I was looking fat and one of my employers sent me to the gym. Sivakumar asked me to take up powerlifting.
I got my daughter too to join me,” she says. Masilamani and her family live in a house with a tin roof free of cost, thanks to one of her employers. Shivakumar trains the mother and daughter for free. But how do they manage a powerlifter’s diet with the `4,000 that Masilamani earns a month? Her husband is a daily wage worker and doesn’t make much more.
Masilamani says they have no special diet. They eat regular meals, mostly rice. In fact, her daughter has lunch at school, under the government’s noon meal scheme. Sivakumar says each lifter would need at least `2,500 a month for proper protein intake. He hopes the mother and daughter would get sponsors once they do well at the Chennai competition.
