As she turns 90, Mumbai’s first woman Olympian revisits divided skirts, other hurdles | Mumbai News – Times of India
MUMBAI: In 1950s Bandra, every time someone would ask Francis Sequeira how he met or rather “caught up” with his wife Mary D’Souza–who could run an 80-metre hurdle race in less than 13 seconds–the oil firm employee would say: “I waited for her at the tape.” Outpaced by her husband only in wit, D’Souza, a track-and-field athlete and field hockey champion who met Sequeira at a picnic years after she became one of India’s first four women Olympians in 1952, was his equal in marriage.
Leaving her household in the care of a full-time maid whose name incidentally was also Mary D’Souza, the railway sports recruiter travelled widely with her first love, the hockey stick–a sort of freedom that eluded her as the seventh of 12 children of a train driver who would say if she needed exercise she “should sweep the floors instead of running around like a mad woman”.
As she turns a nimble 90 this month in the obscurity of US’ Atlanta, D’Souza–who stays up to play online bridge–feels age is catching up. Mumbai looks like Manhattan to her now and Bandra, too, has lost its Goa-like charm.
Leaping over memories of divided skirts and divided convent school classrooms–in which Anglo-Indian children never mingled with regular Indian kids–the veteran pines for the rental bungalows, beaches and song-and-dance picnics of the suburb in which she grew up in 151 Hill Road–a building with an Irani restaurant. “We could walk to the railway station and play hockey on the municipal ground behind our building,” says D’Souza, who earned her stripes in field hockey by being the only girl who played the sport with the boys.
While seeing her sprint in the wings during a hockey game, her cousin had suggested track-and-field. He told her he would enter her in a track meet.
“But when I went, he had not signed me up so I wasted a year. Another cousin signed me up the following year. I tried it out and did okay,” recounts D’Souza, who darted her way coach-less into the nationals, got selected for the First Asian Games in Delhi in 1951, broke the national record in the 200-metre hurdle race there and, just like that, at age 20, made it to the list of eight athletes meant to represent India at the Olympics in Finland’s Helsinki in 1952.
Apart from West Bengal’s Nilima Ghose, bindi-sporting D’Souza was the only female track athlete in the chartered flight from Dum Dum airport to Helsinki.
“Sadly, no one really cared,” says D’Souza, recalling the tepid reaction of her bigger-than-a-hockey-team family to her selection and performance at the 100 meter and 200 meter races at the event. “Although they did nothing worth mentioning, they improved upon their performances in India,” Moinul Haq, chef-de-mission of the Indian Olympic contingent, had said about the women athletes who returned with lifelong friendships.
“People were taken up with us Indian women, especially in our saris,” says D’Souza, recalling American legend Harrison Dillard aka the “world’s fastest man” asking where her starting blocks were during practice. “I had none, so he gave me his blocks.”
What D’Souza had were stumbling blocks. Unlike the rich West Bengal, Bombay–then a state under the watch of CM Morarji Desai–did not sponsor its athletes. This almost killed the Olympic dream for D’Souza as her father could not afford the per-person participation fee of Rs 5,000. Her friends chipped in. “They organized a dance and a whist (card) tournament to raise money,” recalls D’Souza. This, along with the centre’s decision to provide funds, helped her board her first flight.
Money wasn’t the only invisible hurdle. At the time, World Hockey Federation’s rules dictated that women athletes wear divided skirts and convent school modesty meant that St Joseph’s student D’Souza had to run track, too, in divided skirts. “It was ridiculous,” says D’Souza, recalling that her sister Rose would invariably hit the bar while jumping in them. Later, D’Souza–who used to secretly jump over the wall at night to St Andrew’s, the neighbouring boy’s school, to practice as her school did not have a ground–would switch to shorts for track. “Spectators came more to see women in shorts than us run or play!”
“You can’t eat your fame,” D’Souza would tell her daughter, Marissa, a gifted runner, to distract her from the sporting world that had given the Olympian fame but very little cash. Later, the fame, too, disappeared until Marissa’s efforts would lead to D’Souza receiving the Dhyan Chand award in 2013. “Athletes and not power hungry people should be in charge of parent bodies,” says 90-year-old D’Souza, who dreams of winning a Padma Shri before reaching the tape of her life. Recently when she wrote to the national Hockey Federation proposing her name for the prestigious award, the ball came back into her court: “They wrote back to ask the Athletic Federation.”
Leaving her household in the care of a full-time maid whose name incidentally was also Mary D’Souza, the railway sports recruiter travelled widely with her first love, the hockey stick–a sort of freedom that eluded her as the seventh of 12 children of a train driver who would say if she needed exercise she “should sweep the floors instead of running around like a mad woman”.
As she turns a nimble 90 this month in the obscurity of US’ Atlanta, D’Souza–who stays up to play online bridge–feels age is catching up. Mumbai looks like Manhattan to her now and Bandra, too, has lost its Goa-like charm.
Leaping over memories of divided skirts and divided convent school classrooms–in which Anglo-Indian children never mingled with regular Indian kids–the veteran pines for the rental bungalows, beaches and song-and-dance picnics of the suburb in which she grew up in 151 Hill Road–a building with an Irani restaurant. “We could walk to the railway station and play hockey on the municipal ground behind our building,” says D’Souza, who earned her stripes in field hockey by being the only girl who played the sport with the boys.
While seeing her sprint in the wings during a hockey game, her cousin had suggested track-and-field. He told her he would enter her in a track meet.
“But when I went, he had not signed me up so I wasted a year. Another cousin signed me up the following year. I tried it out and did okay,” recounts D’Souza, who darted her way coach-less into the nationals, got selected for the First Asian Games in Delhi in 1951, broke the national record in the 200-metre hurdle race there and, just like that, at age 20, made it to the list of eight athletes meant to represent India at the Olympics in Finland’s Helsinki in 1952.
Apart from West Bengal’s Nilima Ghose, bindi-sporting D’Souza was the only female track athlete in the chartered flight from Dum Dum airport to Helsinki.
“Sadly, no one really cared,” says D’Souza, recalling the tepid reaction of her bigger-than-a-hockey-team family to her selection and performance at the 100 meter and 200 meter races at the event. “Although they did nothing worth mentioning, they improved upon their performances in India,” Moinul Haq, chef-de-mission of the Indian Olympic contingent, had said about the women athletes who returned with lifelong friendships.
“People were taken up with us Indian women, especially in our saris,” says D’Souza, recalling American legend Harrison Dillard aka the “world’s fastest man” asking where her starting blocks were during practice. “I had none, so he gave me his blocks.”
What D’Souza had were stumbling blocks. Unlike the rich West Bengal, Bombay–then a state under the watch of CM Morarji Desai–did not sponsor its athletes. This almost killed the Olympic dream for D’Souza as her father could not afford the per-person participation fee of Rs 5,000. Her friends chipped in. “They organized a dance and a whist (card) tournament to raise money,” recalls D’Souza. This, along with the centre’s decision to provide funds, helped her board her first flight.
Money wasn’t the only invisible hurdle. At the time, World Hockey Federation’s rules dictated that women athletes wear divided skirts and convent school modesty meant that St Joseph’s student D’Souza had to run track, too, in divided skirts. “It was ridiculous,” says D’Souza, recalling that her sister Rose would invariably hit the bar while jumping in them. Later, D’Souza–who used to secretly jump over the wall at night to St Andrew’s, the neighbouring boy’s school, to practice as her school did not have a ground–would switch to shorts for track. “Spectators came more to see women in shorts than us run or play!”
“You can’t eat your fame,” D’Souza would tell her daughter, Marissa, a gifted runner, to distract her from the sporting world that had given the Olympian fame but very little cash. Later, the fame, too, disappeared until Marissa’s efforts would lead to D’Souza receiving the Dhyan Chand award in 2013. “Athletes and not power hungry people should be in charge of parent bodies,” says 90-year-old D’Souza, who dreams of winning a Padma Shri before reaching the tape of her life. Recently when she wrote to the national Hockey Federation proposing her name for the prestigious award, the ball came back into her court: “They wrote back to ask the Athletic Federation.”
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