Dolly Nazir
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A brief biography
By Sharmila Ganesan-Ram
July 12, 2021: The Times of India
She was known as Little Dolly back in 1946. At age 10, Carmichael Road’s Dolly Nazir quickly started flapping her way into national headlines as “India’s wonder mermaid”. It was when Dolly’s swimming coach, Sushil Ghose, decided to move from Mumbai to Kolkata in 1945, that her father Rustom took his place. Though he wasn’t a great swimmer, the boxer believed talent could be fully honed by focusing on one sphere of a sport instead of competing in events of varying distances and styles. The philosophy paid off. In the years bookending India’s Independence, Nazir set so many national records that American and Austrian newspapers would register her feats. But Dolly, who used to correspond with foreign swimmers such as American aquatic champion L D B Handley whom she called “uncle”, hungered for the Olympic Games. She was selected to represent India at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. While her performance at the Games, like that of other wom en athletes from the country then, was lacklustre, it broke a sturdy glass ceiling. Later, Dolly moved to Bengaluru after marrying horse trainer Rashid Byramji. She now lives on in the memory of her daughter-in-law Parvati, known for being India’s first woman horse trainer, as the “formidable, determined, decent Dolly aunty”.
