Spectacular Shuttlers

THE TALE OF A STUNNING MOTHER-DAUGHTER BADMINTON TEAM

By Veloscope

May 12^th, 2019

She played badminton in school for three years, and stopped when the messiness of life took over. It seemed that she had buried the badminton dream deep, and had “grown up”, to marriage, children, and taking tuitions twice a day. With some spare time for her other passion – creating art – she seemed to be coasting along. Her son Raj plays football and creates fabulous art, taking after his mother in pursuing the arts. Her daughter Nitya is in college and plays badminton. Sounds like the story of so many of us, right? Except, its not. This is the story of Ajita Ravindran’s ascendancy from sporting mother, to sporting tour de force.

Ajita recognized early on, that the role of sports in her children’s life was invaluable – it taught them life lessons like the importance of hard work, practice and determination. So, she drove them to practice, to classes and more. In typical mother fashion, she put her children’s needs first, and gave them a solid grounding in sports.

Opportunity came in the form of a chance to play at the Nationals being held in Kerala. While she went partly because it was close to her sister’s place, and partly to test her own abilities, this event gave her perspective on where she stood against the best in the country.

Armed with this information, Ajita started setting up goals for herself, and started improving her game. How? She and her daughter coached each other, mentored each other, watched videos online to pick up strategy and technical details, and with each day of practice, got better and stronger.

It all changed when, while driving her daughter to badminton practice, she realized she also could get back in touch with the sport. It began as a small effort to snatch an hour in a busy day for her own good health. After all, it has been 22 years since she last played badminton and she felt that with children growing up, she could put aside an hour for herself. She started to play in the neighbourhood club with a group. She loved the sport, so she played consistently, and started participating in local tournaments. Soon these morphed into district tournaments – Ajita’s ability with the shuttle was that good.

Her badminton career progressed, and she raked up medals. The epitome of her career has been the recent bronze medal in the national level championships in 2018, which earned her a chance to represent the country in Poland in 2019.

Anything worthwhile needs sacrifices. To spend more time for herself in the sport, she has had to give up some of her work with teaching tuitions, in favour of focused practice. It has helped transform her game and has blossomed into something much bigger now.

At the Mumbai Games, where her daughter Nitya and a friend had registered to play Badminton for the Navi Mumbai Ninjas, Ajita was all set to watch from the sidelines and cheer. Things changed when her daughter’s partner had to pull out and her daughter was partnerless. In full mom mode, which means, to step in and solve every problem in the child’s path, Ajita jumped in to be Nitya’s partner. There was no looking back for either of them!

Enter the crowd favourites for the Navi Mumbai Ninjas. Ajita says, to be given a jersey and recognition as a certain contingent really was a gamechanger. She and Nitya were surprised when large groups of absolute strangers came by to see their games, and supported them wholeheartedly. All, because they were from the same neighbourhood. What also made them a good team to root for is the complementary energy they bring to the partnership. What also possibly helped is the family resemblance is quite striking - Ajita’s youthful good looks complement Nitya’s fresh and bright enthusiasm - and together, they look like a partnership that's going places. The duo played hard, as much for themselves, as they did, to be the true ninjas of Navi Mumbai. They fought all the way to the podium, and netted themselves silver medals. Possibly more importantly, they were crowd favourites – this spirited team comprising of a mother-daughter duo – and they inspired a stadium full of Navi Mumbaikars, who probably went home, thinking, #KhelnaHai, and are planning to play more sports with their parents and children.