A common aim: Meet champion archers Deepika Kumari and Atanu Das
They’ve just qualified for the Olympics and will be India’s first couple at the Games. She is tenacious and single-minded. He says he finds inspiration in her excellence and ambition.
It is easy to miss the determination at the core of Deepika Kumari; it stays camouflaged behind the dimpled smile that she generously spreads around whether she is on top of the world or not.
But it is her resoluteness of character that helped her leave home at 13, break into the junior national archery team, win the Youth World Championships and, in three years, represent India at the Commonwealth Games (CWG).
At the CWG in New Delhi, on October 10, 2010, India got its first feel of international archery. By that evening, Kumari had an individual and a team gold medal around her neck. Modern Indian archery hadn’t seen such a meteoric rise before.
Despite its deep connection with Indian mythology — Rama of the Ramayana and Arjuna of the Mahabharata were both legendary archers and their skill was seen to represent greatness, power, and purity of purpose — archery has not flourished as a mass sport in modern India.
Successes at the highest levels, the Olympics and the World Championships, have been few and far between. The legendary Limba Ram finished fourth in the 30m* at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and that is the closest an Indian has got to an individual medal at the Games.
At the World Championships, Kumari was part of both teams that won silver at the 2011 edition in Turin and at the 2015 edition in Copenhagen.
The men’s team’s first success at the biennial event was a silver medal in Madrid in 2005. More than a decade later, in 2019, led by Atanu Das, they won silver in the Netherlands. Das did not burst onto the scene. He picked up archery at the Calcutta Archery Club and, in 2006, went for his first trials at the elite Tata Archery Academy (TAA) in Jamshedpur, which was then considered the smoothest route to the national team.
He was rejected, but did not give up. He sat down with seniors and coaches at the club to identify the faults in his draw technique and ways to rectify them. By the end of that year, he was the junior national champion, beating a TAA archer. And by default, the Academy doors opened to him.
His second heartbreak occurred when he lost at the 2012 London Olympic team selection trials by one point. He considered quitting but decided to give himself another chance. By 2014, his confidence was back. The men’s team of former world No 1 Jayanta Talukdar, 2010 Commonwealth Games individual gold medallist Rahul Banerjee and 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games individual silver medallist Tarundeep Rai was beginning to show signs of weakness and Das squeezed into the 2016 Rio Olympics team after another closely fought selections trial. He hasn’t looked back since.
Earlier this week, on April 25, both Kumari, who is employed by Tata Steel, and Das, who works with Bharat Petroleum, stood atop the World Cup Stage 1 podium after winning individual golds in the women’s and men’s recurve respectively in Guatemala City.
Das whooped and punched the air when he hit a perfect 30 in the final round, which ensured him his first World Cup individual gold. This was Kumari’s third individual World Cup gold (after Antalya in 2012 and Salt Lake City in 2018), and like she does every time, she grinned from ear to ear.
Kumari, 26, is now married to Das, 29. They tied the knot last June, wearing face masks amid the pandemic. For her, archery was a means to a better life. For him, it was about standing out in a crowd made up almost entirely of cricketers and footballers. This August in Tokyo, they will become India’s first couple at the Olympics.
Kumari is from the Ratu Chati village near Ranchi where most girls are married while in their teens. Her big break came via Meera Munda, wife of former Jharkhand chief minister Arjun Munda, who saw potential in the then 13-year-old and offered her a spot at the residential Seraikela-Kharsawan archery academy, in 2007. Kumari’s cousin Vidya was already an archer. Staying at the academy would mean she wouldn’t have to worry about food, and at that point, that was incentive enough.
But her family wasn’t happy with this choice. Kumari was handed an ultimatum by her father, then an autorickshaw driver. If she chose to go, she would sacrifice her ties with her family. Kumari made her choice and, for years, didn’t return home. She moved from the Jharkhand academy to the Sports Authority of India centre in Kolkata in 2008 and, during breaks in training at the national camp, she would live in a hostel in Ranchi.
Reconciliation would come with her first big win. In 2010, as TV channels across the country celebrated her medals at the CWG, her father Shivnarayan Mahato told the cameras: “I underestimated her determination.”
Das knows well the unshakeable will that drives his wife. “I try and learn from her ‘thhan liya toh karenge hi (if I’ve made up my mind, I must do it)’ attitude,” he said during the first lockdown in March 2020.
Kumari has a simpler way of explaining her drive. “Poverty can either make you determined or frustrated,” she said at a TEDx event in February. “I was very poor once. But I would dream. Dreams are not meant only for the rich. Anyone can dream... I still dream.”
(* The archery contests at the Olympics used to be held over four distances — 90m, 70m, 50m and 30m for men and 70m, 60m, 50m and 30m for women. Since 2000, all Olympics archery events are held over 70m)