It’s not every day that an athlete walks into the Asian Games while a biopic on her is running to full houses back home. So no wonder there is an extra buzz about M.C. Mary Kom as she begins her pursuit of a first Asian Games gold medal in Incheon.
The Indian squad, despite the pullout of some big names at the last moment, still has enough star power in Sania Mirza or the super shuttler girls Saina Nehwal and P. V. Sindhu. Their contribution in taking Indian sport beyond the realms of cricket and evoking corporate interest has been exemplary, but none of them are as unique as ‘Magnificent Mary’.
This is no review of the film on the boxer, but one cannot resist a reference to this reasonably honest Bollywood product while talking about her in recent context. There is no substitute for a well-packaged product and the power of marketing to drive a message home and, to that extent, it’s a story well told that can serve as an aperitif for Indian sports fans for the Asian Games.
As the Priyanka Chopra-led film was ending with the climax of Mary overcoming huge mental pressure to win the fourth of her five amateur world titles, my 10-year-old daughter was curious as to why the film didn’t show her Olympic bronze at the 2012 London Games. It was dismissed with a still shot — but then that’s a part of her folklore that the sports buffs are familiar with.
It may not be an exaggeration to say that, if women’s boxing had been a part of the Olympics before, then this 31-year-old mother-of-three stood a good chance of being a rare multiple medallist from India in an individual sport.
However, it’s the period between 2000 and 2012 that saw the actual Mary Kom story unfold — when she broke the barriers and fought discrimination with an iron will to win those five world titles. Much to the credit of the film, it focused mostly on that largely untold story and left it on the threshold of her Olympic success.
Comparisons between this film and the blockbuster on Milkha Singh — India’s iconic quarter-miler — have begun and it’s a no-brainer that the one on Mary will fall way short in terms of box office ingredients. The money-spinner ‘Bhag Milkha Bhag’ (Run Milkha Run) had a heady recipe for Bollywood success with the trauma of partition, jingoism, drama and romance. The one on Kom, on the other hand, is much like her personality — too simplistic, uneventful and stark, where the only source of drama lay in her struggles both in and out of the ring.
Moving on to real life from the reel one, Mary is back in the ring once again and it’s hugely encouraging to see her talking about using the Asiad as a launchpad towards winning gold at the Rio Olympics in 2016.
A gold in Incheon will certainly be a step in the right direction. But in case she fails, it’s not going to diminish her legend in any way.
