Arundhati Choudhary: The maths whizz who chose boxing over career in IIT
The junior boxer is hoping to bag gold in the upcoming World Championship in Poland
Kota is the cradle of IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) entrance coaching institutes. Training centres and tutorial homes have mushroomed in every nook and corner of this small town of Rajashthan. Aspirants from across India assimilate here to fulfil their, or more often their parent's unfulfilled dreams, of battling for a spot in India's premier engineering institute.
And hence it wasn't a surprise that Kota-born boxer Arundhati Choudhary's father wanted her to give up the sport and enroll in one such institute. What made matters more complicated for her was that she was good at academics and in fact brilliant at mathematics.
"IIT karna hai (You must get admitted to IIT). That's it." This was what Arundhati's father told her when she sheepishly mentioned that she wanted to make a career in sports.
However, back then she was not even into boxing. Her first love was basketball. She was good at it and even played at the state level.
"I had almost given up. One day I started crying to my mother and insisted that I wanted to do sports. The feeling of achieving something on the ground is very motivating for me," stated the boxer to Olympic Channel.
After much cajoling, her mother managed to convince her father to let Arundhati pursue sports simultaneously with her studies.
"But then my father said that you have to pick an individual sport. Boxing struck me at the first instance because that is one sport that would allow me to punch the opposition. I wanted to fight.
"I used to be a tom-boy in school and if anybody would do anything untoward I would beat him up. I did not put up with any nonsense. My father warned that I could lose my teeth and my face could get disfigured in boxing. I replied that I would do the same to her as well then. He just laughed at my response," she narrated.
But the first hurdle she faced was that there was no boxing coach in Kota. After a lot of effort, she came across Ashok Goutam, a Wushu coach. Nevertheless, she started her apprenticeship under him.
"In the morning I started training at 4:30. Then after coming back from school I would again go on to train. Ek junoon sa tha. (It was like a passion)."
In the 10th standard, she was selected for the national camp. Before the board exams, she studied for just 12 days and yet passed with first division. And in her first junior nationals, she won gold and was even awarded the best boxer award.
"My coach worked harder than me. He would watch videos of boxing and then come and teach me. Looking at his efforts I got more motivated."
She hardly had to look back after winning her first gold in the nationals. In the Khelo India Games, she bagged gold for three consecutive years and made a name for herself in the domestic circuit in the 69kg category. Even in her first international tournament in Ukraine, she bagged gold.
"I am an aggressive boxer. In my first international bout, the referee had to stop it in the first round. In the second bout, I was surprised that after the first round she had not given up. So after the break, I started punching her left and right and seeing that her coach threw the towel in the ring. Whereas, in Serbia, she could fight only for 20 seconds."
But in July 2018, she suffered an injury that threatened her career in boxing.
"After Khelo India, I went home. There were a few local boxers who were very conservative and did not like girls doing boxing. One day during training, one of them hit me so hard that I went unconscious. He was foul punching me. It was a very serious head injury and I had to stay for a month in the hospital. Sir told him not to be aggressive and yet when Sir went to answer a phone call he made the most of the opportunity. He was expelled soon after."
Blackouts became commonplace for her. Many times she would collapse while hitting the punch bag. She was on the verge of giving up.
"But once again my coach came to my rescue. When medicines stopped working I turned to ayurvedic under his discretion. Gradually I started recovering fully. But the pain kept coming back. There would be doctors besides the ring and many times after getting treated in hospital I would step into the ring."
In spite of not being at her best, she won bronze at the ASBC Youth Asian Men & Women Championship Mongolia in 2019. But Arundhati thinks she could have done much better if she was completely fit.
During the lockdown, she focused on her hand and feet coordination. Moreover, it provided her with the ideal window to get back to the best version of herself after recovering fully from the injury.
"I gave my all in training so that I can come back strongly. Even the chief coach admitted that I have improved. I trained morning and evening during the lockdown. During my board exams also, I trained in the evening."
Her efforts bore fruit when she won gold at the Adriatic Pearl Tournament in Montenegro. And now she has shifted her focus to the AIBA World Youth Boxing Championship which is slated to be held in Poland from April 10.
"I want gold. Before ASBC I just prayed to God so that I recover in time from my injury. Now I am raring to fight in Poland. There's no better feeling in the world than getting a perfect knockout punch with full power. "