Salute to Woman Power

This Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the lives of some of our exceptional members, who have dared to break the shackles of convention and managed to create a niche of their own. 

 

Sports, arts & junk craft

 

Jharna Dutta narrates to Mousumi Gupta how she earned the sobriquet of the “racquet grandma” during her stay in Bihar. 

 

Mrs Jharna Dutta’s husband joined the Tata Group’s mining engineering branch in Bihar in the early-1960s.  

 

On her foray into sports, Mrs Dutta said: “Right since my childhood days, I was extremely interested in different sporting activities. I was delighted when I got an opportunity to join the Tata Group club. By the time I took to playing badminton at the club seriously in the 1990s, my daughter had got married and even had her first child.” 

 

Mrs Dutta excelled in the game so much that she was offered to represent the Tata Group in the Bihar State Badminton Championship in both the singles and mixed doubles categories. 

 

“During the early 1990s, I happened to represent the Tata Group and won many accolades for our team. But the part which attracted attention from all quarters was the fact that I had become a grandmother by then. A grandmother playing badminton representing the Tata Group in several tournaments and that too, on a winning streak, was something unheard of. It became news in those days,” said a beaming Mrs Dutta with the glint of girl-like pride evident in her eyes. 

 

But Mrs Dutta’s field of conquests is not limited to badminton only. The veritable powerhouse of talent, Mrs Dutta, is also a skilled painter, a junk artist (creating artwork from household trash articles) and a poet, a sort of all-round ambassador of arts and sports in the truest sense. 

 

Her creations in sand art and those made up from household junk adorn the walls of the living room of her flat. Most visitors are often at a loss to understand or guess that the eye-catching objet d’art displayed all around are not bought from any shop but the creations of the lady of the house. 

 

 

 

 

Pic credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/badminton-shuttle-sport-bat-racket-1428047/