Horse-riding, a passion of the rich and famous, is often perceived to be a male preserve. A few women are fighting to change the narrative
How does one extricate oneself from the gender stereotypes of horse-riding? With thick skin, of course, and a lot of pluck. Byramji recalls the years she was the only female polo player in the ARC and was taken lightly by her opponents. “At their own peril. I would take advantage of the fact that they were underestimating me and would hit the ball so hard that they wouldn’t make that mistake twice,” she says. Like, marking Colonel Ravi Rathore, an Arjuna Awardee, so hard that he yelled out to his teammates, “Get this girl off my back.” Or, jokes Byramji, when she was thrown out of the field for “cussing like a sailor”, just like the men.
Rinaa Shah, who now owns a polo team, took up the sport at 38, an age when most sportspersons retire. Hooked on to the game after one random visit to the Mahalaxmi Race Course in Mumbai, she started her training the next day, returning to the field despite two fractures in her thumb, back problems and stitches on her upper lip after being hit by a horse with his head. “It’s not an easy process. You have to train your hand with the stick, sit on a wooden horse and hit 100 balls every day, then gradually hit the field and pick up pace over the course of some time. Simultaneously, you’ve got to train the horse so that he isn’t scared of the stick, so that he knows he has to follow the ball,” says Shah.
(This story appears in the 25 October, 2019 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)