Inside the life of a 17-year-old athlete from India

When Rani isn’t roller skating, practising martial arts or batting on the cricket field, she is empowering young girls in her community.

Rani poses outside her home in Varanasi, India (Credit: Bhumika Regmi for Malala Fund)

Rani excels in sports — one look at her trophy-lined bedroom can tell you that.

“I make space for sports in my life because I want to be healthy, happy and respected,” she says.

Rani is a martial artist, cricketer and roller skating champion. She plays sports to defy her community’s expectations of girls. Rani shows her peers they can do more than just get married and have children. “I want girls to look at me and think they can achieve anything they want,” she says.

Every school day, Rani wakes up by 5 a.m., puts on her uniform and heads to school on her bicycle: “I don’t ever skip school. Even if I’m sick, I’ll make it somehow.” (Credit: Bhumika Regmi for Malala Fund)

Some mornings, Rani practises karate with her schoolmates before class. She dreams of becoming an army officer and believes that staying active will help her achieve her goal. “Martial arts makes me fit and will prepare me for the job,” she says. (Credit: Bhumika Regmi for Malala Fund)

But in Rani’s community, “people see girls as a burden until they are married off.”

Rani’s family and neighbourhood are washermen, who wash clothes and linen for a living and earn just enough to get by. Most people in Rani’s community think that sports and education are luxuries they can’t afford.

Rani is able to go to school because her mother has always been supportive of her dreams. “She is not literate but wants her children to study and succeed,” Rani explains. “She knows that only education can take us away from being poor.”

Rani attends an all-girls high school, where she is the monitor of her class. Her school awarded Rani with this role because of her good marks and leadership skills. On days when her teacher is absent, Rani leads the class by taking attendance, reading to her classmates and checking their homework. (Credit: Bhumika Regmi for Malala Fund)

After school, Rani completes her own homework then heads to roller skating practise, where she is one of few girls in her team. Roller skating is Rani’s favourite sport: “I feel like I’m flying.” (Credit: Bhumika Regmi for Malala Fund)

Rani wishes more of her peers would participate in athletics, but she knows that girls are already fighting battles just to be in school — or to be alive at all. 2,000 girls in India are lost everyday to infanticide and selective abortion. Families are disappointed when a girl is born. “They don’t believe daughters can provide for them like sons can,” Rani says.

Through her Girl Icon fellowship, Rani holds monthly meetings with younger girls in her school and encourages them to speak out against the discrimination they face at home and in their communities.

When Rani spoke with Malala Fund, she shared a stanza from a poem she wrote to parents of daughters in India:

Rani wants all parents in India to know that daughters, like sons, can be breadwinners. She dreams of having a successful career someday and proving that girls can accomplish great things.

For now, Rani continues to play her favourite sports, work hard in school and be the role model every girl needs.