3 days Ago By Anuja Chandramouli
To its credit, Olympic bronze medallist, Sakshi Malik’s momentous memoir, Witness, does not bother with pussyfooting around what was, and is, an explosive issue. The Olympian’s style—on and off the wrestling mat—is simple, straightforward, brutally effective and savagely spectacular. With Jonathan Selvaraj, Sakshi takes no prisoners as she goes after not just the likes of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and Amit Shah, but even fellow wrestlers like Vinesh Phogat, Bajrang Punia, Babita Phogat, her own mother (with whom there was an eventual rapprochement), and going so far as to almost, but not quite, accuse a fellow competitive wrestler of witchcraft.
But that’s Sakshi for you. The reader is taken on a whirlwind journey across Sakshi’s life, which is one of strife, triumph, love, loss, tragedy and redemption. It has the vim and verve of a blockbuster while being grounded in raw emotion that is unlikely to leave even the most jaded of readers unmoved.
She is as every bit hard on herself as she is with those who have crossed her. In a poignant portion of her recollections, she reveals how her 7-year-old self would occasionally steal money from her classmates, driven to do so by her poverty. This excuse is trotted out to explain, but not defend, her actions.
Years later, when she herself becomes a victim of robbery on multiple occasions, Sakshi philosophises that it is karma catching up with her. She is also hyper-critical of the “mental weakness” that saw her struggle to stay competitive and relevant in a cutthroat world and her arms which she maligns for being too muscular, with 14-inch thick biceps. A rousing saga of a superstar athlete who overcame overwhelming odds to carve out a story of stupendous success, Witness is also a stark, unsparing account of the terrible corruption and incompetence of the sporting system in India.
We get a close-up view of fat cat officials and state – approved thugs who far from helping athletes are committed to being hindrances at every turn. Readers will be appalled to learn about officials stopping bouts at the most inopportune moments for photo – ops or to allow a favoured athlete to win over the deserving one, abysmal conditions in training facilities and tournaments held in arenas lacking basic amenities, flight tickets being belatedly booked which sees competitors reaching the international venue a couple of hours before crucial match – ups, money donated from sponsors which would guarantee a regular income for sportspeople being swallowed up by the larcenists in the system, the sexual harassment of female athletes and the active sabotage of entire careers if anyone protests, with the ruling party taking the part of the villains over the sons and daughters of India who covered her in sporting glory despite the very Indian nature of their troubles. It is a modern Indian far-from–a-fairytale of evil triumphing over good, though we all declare otherwise for fear of being labelled anti-national.
Brij Bhushan Singh is not quite the super villain to Sakshi’s Wonder Woman. Rather, in Witness, he represents every lowlife who has ever been undeservedly promoted to power and seeks to compensate for his glaring inadequacies and utter lack of even a modicum of merit by doubling down on the worst of his impulses which includes molesting minors, because he knows he will be protected by other hooligans in high places, just like him. Scathing as her condemnation of Singh and even the Prime Minister is, Sakshi makes it clear that it was the cracks that emerged from within their own ranks that also contributed to the undoing of the wrestlers’ protests.
However, she is confident, that the good fight is still being fought, and it will not be long before justice is served. Of course, that is doubtful to say the least, but we can also dare to believe like Sakshi herself did at her lowest, that victory can be eked out of crushing defeat, and it is the deserving who will finally emerge as the victors..
