Bhubaneswar: When anyone has a baby the first question everyone asks is: “Is it a boy or a girl?” Chakradhar Chand and Akhuji Chand, parents of India’s sprint queen Dutee Chand, encountered this question 20 years after the birth of their third child.
They were reduced to leading a life of public humiliation after Dutee was caught in a hyperandrogenism controversy in 2014, forcing her spent a year-and-a-half in the wilderness. During that period, the entire family suffered in silence, feeling humiliation and shame from rejection, and avoided the gaze of their neighbors and their hurtful questions.
They heaved a sigh of relief when the Court of Arbitration for Sports cleared their daughter to compete in national and international athletics events. At last, the smiles were back on the faces of Chakradhar and Akhuji. To add to their joy, the 22-year-old went on to shatter national records and, finally, won two silver (100m and 200m) at the Jakarta Asian Games last month.
She returned to her hometown Bhubaneshwar to a rousing welcome. But before all the adulation, was unbearable hardship.
The third of seven children born to a family of weavers, Dutee was initiated into athletics by her elder sister Saraswati Chand, a former athlete herself. She began running barefoot, had no running shoes with spikes or proper tracks, but what she had was fierce will-power. She used to get blisters on her foot after running for hours on the hot stretches of sand near her home, but that did not deter her from striving hard, for she knew her mission in life was to excel in running.
Her hard work paid rich dividends when she was admitted to the Government Sports Hostel at the age of 12 in recognition of her achievements at school-level competitions.
She was winning national and international sprint medals at will when the hyperandrogenism controversy started to haunt Dutee. On July 12, 2014, a series of tests were conducted on her before she was informed that she had failed a ‘gender test’. Subsequently, Dutee was banned from competing and asked to leave the national camp.
“She was shattered by the fact that her sporting career may be over. Those days were traumatic. She did not step out of the house for weeks or spoke to anybody,” her mother Saraswati said.
“We travelled all the way from Gopalpur to Guwahati to watch her run at the South Asian Games, the first competition she attended after the ban was lifted. It was also a day of redemption for us. We wanted to scream at the world that our girl is back when she won the bronze medal,” she added in a voice choked with emotion.
In 2016, Dutee erased Rachita Mistry’s 16-year-old 100m national record of 11.38 sec by clocking 11.33 sec at the Federation Cup National Athletics Championships in New Delhi, and there was no looking back ever since.
The family, which used to live in a single-room hutment, recently constructed a three-storey house with nine rooms. The sitting room in the new house is lined with tall shelves that display trophies and medals won by Dutee over the years. She also received a cash award of Rs 3 crore from the Odisha government in recognition of her Asian Games feat.
“I want to help these two complete their studies and get decent jobs,” Dutee said, holding her youngster sisters Anjana and Prathibha, who study in Class V and Plus Two respectively, when asked about her most important life goal.
