Pinki Pramanik

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Pinki Pramanik; Picture courtesy: The Times of India, May 9, 2016

This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.

2016

The Times of India, May 9, 2016

Siddharth Saxena

In April 2016 in Delhi, in a race where Dutee Chand established herself as India's fastest woman, bringing up the rear, almost hobbling in her boy's jogging shorts and wiry legs that looked out of place in a well-toned field, was PinkiPramanik. Pinki was coming in through the hard path. Those were a quarter-miler's legs, and ones that had stayed away , and not a sprinter's. The whispers had begun even as the announcer read out the start list and soon, people wanted to know, once again, who she was and what she was doing there.

That Pinki belongs to this life, in the starting block in the eight-lane track, is what she has returned to tell us ¬ and herself.It didn't matter that, once again, she trailed in last in the 100m here in Patiala too. Somewhere for Pinki, the humiliation of coming in last on the track, on her comeback trail, is so fleeting, so irrelevant and nothing compared to what she has been through in the last few years.

This time, in 2016, Pinki was running after 2008, back when she was just 21 and amongst the top single-lap runners in India. There was a 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games 4x400m relay silver too.Then in 2012, came the rape charge by a female friend, and the public humiliation that followed was bad enough to destroy the best of people -to be declared a male, having to undergo strange, medieval tests to determine her gender and a protracted legal battle. But, having emerged from it all, Pinki maintains she's still the same person. “Haan, thodasapehle se logon peyitna easily bharosanahinkartihoon ab, lekin ab bhiwaisihoon,“ she says.

Pinki's out on a limb here.Having taken a prolonged leave (without pay) from her job as a TTE with Western Railways, she says she's got only Rs 83,000 left in her account, having spent Rs 1.4 lakh of her savings in her comeback mission. “I need to get into the National camp,“ she says simply, betraying no affect. “My timings are good, can improve under coaching in the National camp. There could be an outside chance in the relays, which I am hoping for, and Rio, who knows...“