Wrestling with doubt: Rudraneil Sengupta writes on Sakshi Malik’s new memoir

How are athletes made in India? What is it like to feel the fear and fight anyway? Witness is a bold, candid look at the making of a winner.

Her mother Sudesh Malik worked at an anganwadi. Her father Sukhbir Malik was a government bus conductor who left home at 5 am and travelled two hours from Rohtak to Delhi, to get to work.

Malik celebrates gold at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Six years earlier, she won bronze at the Rio Games, the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal in wrestling. (Getty Images)

Sakshi Malik, as a result, was a somewhat lonely child.

She was raised largely by her grandmother, Chandravali Devi, first in the village of Mokhra in Haryana, then in Rohtak city.

She loved sports in school, so her parents took her to the local stadium