Making Her Mark: The Kayaking Nymph Of Kashmir

When Bilquis Mir, 35, the top woman kayaking and canoeing player in Kashmir, entered her home in the Khanyar locality of old Srinagar town some 27 years ago, after her first kayaking practice session, she was rebuked by her parents. “When I reached home, my clothes were wet. This shocked my parents and they beat me up. They couldn’t understand that girls can participate in water sports. They found it strange and going against the norms of society,” says Mir.

Mir had to struggle within the system, outside the system and in the home to be a sportsperson. She started her career in Kashmir in the 1990s when guns were blazing from all sides. It was not easy for anyone to step out of home. For her, it has been a long fight to be out of her home, to be in tracksuit and to be in a kayak, to practice daily. “It has been a tough journey and I sailed through it but the battle is not over,” says Mir.

Her passion for the sport began accidentally.

She was studying in the 5th grade at a school in Barbarshah locality of Srinagar when a friend asked her to come along with her for kayaking at Nehru Park in Dal Lake, around 2 km from her school. As she watched her friend into a kayak, the water sports coach there told her to either step in a kayak or leave the place. “He said he didn’t like anyone watching the game from the shore,” Mir says. Waiting for her friend in the garden was not easy for her as she was in school uniform, so she preferred to play ball. During the hour-long session, she fell off the kayak around 40 times.

“Though my parents told me to behave like a girl, I hated the idea. The next day, I bunked classes to join training and it became a routine,” she says. When her parents came to know that she was bunking classes for ‘boat sports’, “they put immense emotional pressure on her”. She thought it was over.

To make matters worse, the neighbours started whispering about her, while relatives began ranting to her mother about her child going ‘wayward’. “Those initial years of training and learning were stressful and I cried many times. I couldn’t explain it to my parents that people always wag their tongues. So be it if they do talk about me,” Mir says, with a tinge of sadness. Somehow, she managed to convince her mother that she was on the right track and would do well in the sport. With her mother on her side, she began going for training sessions regularly and even brought a kayak paddle home.

She devised her own coping strategy to beat prying eyes. She would hide the paddle under her pheran, a long Kashmiri attire worn in winters, when going out for training. “At times, I wouldn’t bring the paddle home and keep it at a friend’s home. This is how life has been,” Mir says, leaning back in her chair in her office.

Those days, she says, all but three girls were into water sports. “Two of them left in a few years and I was the only one who persisted. It was my passion and support from my mother that helped me to move on,” she says. Things began to change when she won a water sports tournament in Jammu and Kashmir in 1998. Four years later, she was selected to represent the state for the national competition in Hyderabad. After that, there was no looking back for her.

She is at the centre of water sports in Jammu and Kashmir, wearing several hats; she represented India in the ICF Sprint World Cup in Hungary in 2009, coached the Indian canoe teams from 2010 to 2015 and officiated as a judge in the 2018 Asian Games. She now heads the Jammu and Kashmir Water Sports Council as director of water sports, training around 200 girls in the sport.

She simultaneously pursued her studies and has a bachelor’s degree in Arts from Kashmir University.  “Like every other parent in Kashmir, my parents too wanted me to become a doctor or an engineer. But I chose Arts to get enough time to devote to the sport,” she says.  She also did a master’s degree in Educa­tion and has a diploma in water sports from Budapest, Hungary. When she began way back in 1998, there was no infrastructure available for water sports, except for a few boats. But things have changed for the better now as the government is providing the best equipment and other facilities to the water sports department.

Mir, however, says there is a need to improve sports standards in schools and universities. “In foreign countries Olympians do not come from sports academies. They come from universities and schools, as sports get priority there during schooling, when children are at the right age to learn and practise,” she adds.

Knowing well that there is no sports infrastructure available, Mir visits schools and colleges across the Valley to recruit children. “We go for a talent hunt and we do indoor rowing competitions for children,” she says. As various sports activities have been picking up across Kashmir in the past two decades, water sports among girls is also gaining popularity. “I have observed that a number of children who come for water sports are from poor families. We don’t have sports hostels to provide them food and sports facilities, even as they pursue their studies,” Mir says. “If we dream big, we must have a roadmap for Asian Games medals and that will only come when we have sports infrastructure and a sports culture in our schools,” she avers.

In the freezing winters, when the temperature in Kashmir dips to minus 6 degrees, Mir practises around 15–20 km everyday in Dal Lake. For her to be in the water is a lifeline. “I think I have some spiritual connection with water. I cannot live without being in the water,” says Mir.

When she started water sports, she says, it was looked down upon. “But I had a dream that I wanted the best sports centre to be made in Kashmir, so that our future generation does not face problems as we did. That’s why I came back to Kashmir from abroad. I could’ve stayed back as I had played the World Cup and had many opportunities there.”

(This appeared in the print edition as "Making HER MARK")