From mother selling jewellery to finding happiness in fencing: Bhavani Devi’s heartwarming story
CA Bhavani Devi has won the national fencing title eight times. She also became the first Indian fencer to qualify for the Olympics (2020). Those are spectacular achievements and she knows it.
Those are not what gives her happiness though, because professionally, she’s always wanting to achieve more – an Asian title, an Olympic medal. What gives her true happiness, she says, is the fact that she had paid off all the loans her family had secured for her just so that she could continue playing her sport.
“Fencing is an expensive sport. There’s always going to be a financial burden if you hail from a lower-middle class, choose fencing as your profession and have to travel abroad for competitions. A ballpark figure can be as much as Rs 70-80 lakh annually. We didn’t have that kind of money,” she told The Indian Express on the sidelines of the GoSports Awards Night here on Tuesday.
Bhavani’s parents, her mother, in particular, weren’t going to allow her to give up on her dreams.
“My parents would go to offices and ask for some kind of funding for me. If they weren’t successful, my mother, at times, has even sold her jewellery just so I could compete at international competitions,” Bhavani says, recalling the times when the funding would come only a couple of days before a tournament and she had to hurriedly pack her bags and book tickets.
A decade separating these three memorable experiences at the National Games!!!2011-🥇🥇2015-🥇🥇2022-🥇🥇…Thank you everyone for your constant support and encouragement!#NationalGames #36thNationalGames #Gujarat pic.twitter.com/azA1V86mct
— C A Bhavani Devi (@IamBhavaniDevi) October 3, 2022
Being supported the GoSports Foundation and having represented the country at the Olympics means that she no longer has to struggle financially.
What that struggle however has given her is an invaluable experience and an outlook toward life that she would’ve never had, she says.
“Had I not taken up fencing I would’ve been a normal person who thought she had to stay quiet, focus on her studies and be shy all the time. With what I’ve experienced so far, I feel that I’m capable of facing any obstacle right now,” the 29-year-old says.
Choosing the sport
In secondary school, Bhavani signed up for all activities she could: Taekwondo, squash, volleyball, in which she says she was exceptional, and even embroidery, in which she was anything but exceptional.
In standard six, she zeroed in on two sports— squash and fencing. But it so happened that both the tournaments were on the same day. For the squash event, she had to take a bus to the venue while the fencing event was at the stadium she was already at. And since her friends were already at the stadium, she chose to stay there.
ℎ ℎ 🫶
📹 India’s first Olympic fencer Bhavani Devi’s stunning show at Tokyo 2020 #Fencing | @IamBhavaniDevi | @FIE_fencing pic.twitter.com/ryLnihaE32
— Olympic Khel (@OlympicKhel) August 27, 2022
“I also thought only affluent people play squash as it’s mostly played in clubs and gymkhanas. Thankfully I had no real idea about the costs of fencing,” she says with a laugh.
While her friends all won medals in that competition, she was the only one who didn’t win anything. “I was so upset that it motivated me to do better. It was losing that school event that made me set goals. And they just kept getting bigger — drict, state, national, international,” she says.
Fencing in India
Fencing in the country has largely been a lonely sport for Bhavani. Before the Olympics, there was nobody competing on the international stage like her. Things have changed dramatically, Bhavani says.
Four National Centres of Excellence (NCOE) have been established where they’ve hired foreign coaches.
“What has changed is that athletes are being sent for more international competitions, sometimes more than five events in a year. And not just the seniors, it’s the juniors that are been sent too.
“When I was competing in the cadet category, I took part in just one competition. That affected me a lot because when I went to the senior level, I just couldn’t cope at all. I’m glad it won’t be the same for the athletes now,” she says.
Paris 2024
She had a whirlwind route to qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics, having to depend on South Korea beating Hungary to seal a spot and Bhavani expects it to be just as difficult to qualify for Paris 2024.
“The pressure of qualification is immense but now I want to use my experience. I’ve learned how to be calm and it has helped me tremendously. More than anything, I’m working with a very good team in France and I’m ready.”
So are they chances of an Indian Olympic medal in fencing?
“I’m confident of doing well. Also, with the support fencing has been receiving it’s only a matter of time that fencing medals at the Olympics,” she says.
Bhavani only hopes that countless Indians can have the joy she has had. “Fencing is just happiness. You are playing with a sword without stress. Now that’s fun.”
