On Monday morning, Sharmila Dhankar posted a short poem on her WhatsApp profile that distilled her mindset as she prepared for her competition at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
‘Baaz ki tarah ab firse jhapta marenge; jo khel adhoore the unhe ab savarenge; Dekhna ab hamare kamyabe ka ye jalva; maidan chahe jo ho baaze ham hi marenge!’
(We will pounce once more like a hawk; we will now perfect the games that were left unfinished. Just watch the spectacle of our success—no matter the arena, the victory will be ours)
In the weeks leading up to the Commonwealth Games, Sharmila had been reiterating this. Indeed, when she flew out with the rest of the India Para Sports contingent to the Games last week, Sharmila was adamant that she wasn’t there to make up the numbers. She had a clear goal seared into her mind and, as the poem she had posted went, was determined to pounce like a hawk. “I have to win a medal,” she told Sportstar.
Sharmila, who competes in the women’s seated shot put (F57) event, had already participated in the Commonwealth Games. In Birmingham, four years ago, her dreams had been left unfinished as she placed just outside the podium. “This time I won’t let that happen,” she said. “I’m traveling so far. I can’t come back with nothing.”
She would do more than just return with something. On a chilly Monday evening, spectators at Glasgow’s Scotstoun athletics stadium watched as Sharmila created history. The 40-year-old flung the shot 9.81m – a season’s best effort – to win gold. In doing so she became the first Indian para athlete to win gold at the Commonwealth Games and the first in 20 years to win any medal at all.
With the medal in her hand, Sharmila can finally look back to see just how far she’s come. The journey she speaks of isn’t just a literal one.
Few athletes in Glasgow have travelled as daunting a road as Sharmila to get there.
As she stood on the top of the podium in Glasgow in her navy blue tracksuit with ‘India’ printed on the back, her hair cut in a no-nonsense bob typical of athletes from Haryana, broad shoulders, piercing gaze, sky-high ambitions, and the gold medal to show for it around her neck, Sharmila seems every bit the elite international athlete.
But this wasn’t always the case.
Fourteen years ago, Sharmila says simply, she didn’t want to live.
Born on Independence Day but raised within the shackles of rural Haryana, she was married off at 18 to a man who beat and severely abused her. She felt she had no choice but to endure it.
“Where I am from, it is just something that is accepted. You learn to adjust. I adjusted,” she says.
The abuse started soon after her marriage.
“He used to get drunk. He would use drugs. I worked in the fields, and I worked taking care of cattle. It was never enough. First, he beat me because I didn’t bring the dowry he wanted. Then he beat me because I gave birth to two daughters.”
Eventually, the violence escalated.
“When I was 26, he beat me, stripped me naked in front of the neighbours and threw me out of my home with my two daughters. That was when my parents took me back home,” she recalls.
More than once, Sharmila thought of ending her life.
“I had nothing to look forward to. I didn’t see any future. I thought, let me commit suicide with my daughters. But every time I stopped at the last moment.”
As long as Sharmila can remember, life has been hard.
Growing up in Chitrauli, a village in Haryana’s Mahendergarh district, there was never enough money to go around. Her mother, who was blind, was nearly 20 years younger than her father, a farmer with a small landholding in the drought-prone region bordering Rajasthan.
Sharmila was the second of three daughters. A son was born a decade after the youngest girl.
Medical care was hard to come by. Sharmila contracted polio when she was just two years old, leaving her left leg permanently affected.
But even then, Sharmila had dreams.
“When I was in school, I was always the top student. I thought I’d become a police officer. I also dreamed that one day I’d play sports, but I knew that with my handicap, it was not possible.”
Her dreams, however, didn’t match her circumstances.
As soon as she passed her Class 10 examinations, her parents arranged her marriage.
“I was intelligent, but where I’m from, it was just how things were done.”
When her marriage finally collapsed, she returned home determined to rebuild her life.
“There were several moments where I felt I didn’t have the strength to carry on, but I felt I must fight.”
She took up whatever work she could find.
“I worked as a maid and then as a cleaner and guard at a women’s hospital near my village. The pay was not much, but it kept me busy and feeling useful.”
At 28, she married for the second time.
She did so reluctantly.
“It wasn’t my choice at first because my first experience was so bad, but I felt I needed to for the sake of my two daughters and because I didn’t want to become a burden to my parents, who were getting old. I had no great expectations from the marriage itself.”
ALSO READ | Sharmila becomes India’s first-ever Commonwealth Games gold medallist in Para Athletics
Although she didn’t expect it, her decision proved to be the right one.
After their marriage, her husband Ajit Singh took her and her children, Anuj and Lakshmi, now 16 and 13 respectively, to the town of Rewari, where he worked as a mistri (craftsperson) repairing electrical equipment.
Ajit was everything her first husband wasn’t.
“A lot of men would think it beneath them to marry a divorcee with two children, but he has always loved and supported us. The children don’t see him as anything other than their father, and he doesn’t see them as anything other than his own children.”
The support behind Sharmila Dhankar’s journey. Husband Ajit Singh (left), daughters Lakshmi (second from left) and Anuj (right) have stood by the para shot putter through every step of her rise. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Ajit didn’t just support Sharmila. He reminded her that she still had dreams worth chasing, dreams she herself had forgotten.
“I’m not rich or educated. I’ve only studied till Class 8. But I always loved sports. Even when I was working, I would play badminton in the morning. I was also very curious. I read a lot of news. One day in 2018, I read about para athletics, and I wondered why Sharmila couldn’t also take part. So I asked her, ‘Mehnat karegi?’ (Are you willing to work hard?)”
At first, Sharmila thought her husband had lost his mind.
“I’d never played any sport. And with my handicap, I couldn’t even run. I was also 34 years old. I was going to start at an age where everyone else was ending their career. Despite all this, my husband was very insistent that we explore the idea.”
After asking everyone they knew, they eventually learned that the Rao Tularam Stadium, near their home in Rewari, had para athletes training there. One of them was Tek Chand, bronze medallist in the seated shot put at the 2018 Asian Para Games, who was also working as a coach at the stadium.
“I went and approached Tek Chand sir, and told him that I also wanted to compete in para sports. He gave me a gola (shot) and asked me to throw just to see what my level was. In my first throw, I threw the shot about five metres. When I did that, he looked very surprised. I found out later that the national record was around 6m. He told me, ‘Sharmila, you are already throwing near the national record on your first day. You have a lot of talent.’ When he said that, I also started believing I had the potential to do something special.”
As she immersed herself in training, her performances improved rapidly.
By the following year, she had won gold at the National Championships with a new national record of 7.40m. A year later, she qualified for the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, where she finished fourth despite improving the national record to 8.43m. At last year’s World Championships in New Delhi, she improved the national mark once more to 10.03m while finishing fifth.
Throughout it all, her family backed her to the hilt.
“When I started training, the first thing my husband told me was that it was time to cut my hair short. I always had long hair down to my waist, but my husband told me that all the top athletes in Haryana kept short hair, and now that I was going to be a sportsperson, I should do the same.”
But Ajit did more than encourage cosmetic changes.
“When I started my career, I realised how expensive it is to be a sportsperson. My husband would spend most of his earnings on my training and on my travel to competitions. In 2023, he even sold our house so that I could use the money to prepare for the competition. We now stay in rented accommodation.
“My two daughters are also very supportive. They say, ‘Mummy, you go and train; we will manage the house.’ Kehte hain aandhi toofan aa jaye, but aapko training karni hai (Whatever happens, you have to train).”
Help has come from Sharmila’s mother as well.
“My father passed away in 2023. My mother doesn’t know much about sports, but that year, when she found out that I was struggling financially, she sold half a killa of our farmland and gave me the money from its sale. She tells me that she wants to see me succeed as well.”
At the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Sharmila has achieved the biggest accomplishment of her career. But she hopes that it is only the first of many steps she takes. “I hope that one day I can go on to win a medal at the Paralympics as well,” she had told Sportstar before heading to Glasgow.
What she also hopes for is that she makes a difference to her daughters lives. “I was lucky that I found a good man who supported me and helped me chase my dreams. But I want both Anuj and Lakshmi to be able to chase their own dreams independently,” she says.
Following in their mother’s footsteps, both have taken to sports as well with some success – Lakshmi has started training in the long jump while Anuj won gold in the U-16 javelin throw competition at the North Zone championships last year. “It’s my dream that one day my daughters and I will all compete at a Commonwealth Games and win medals together,” Sharmila says in complete earnestness.
And while they are charting their own journey as an athlete, her daughters can’t help but admire what their mother has accomplished. “She has struggled so much in her life to get to where she is now. When I see what she has done, all the small problems I have feel insignificant. I consider her my role model,” Anuj tells Sportstar.
On Monday evening, in Glasgow, Sharmila stood proudly on the top of the podium. Even without that gleaming piece of metal around her neck, she had by any measure proved herself a winner many times over already.
When she looks back at her life, Sharmila says she sometimes can’t recognize herself. “When I returned home after my first marriage ended, people felt sorry for me. I also felt sorry for myself. When I think of that scared young woman who was tortured by her husband, and who thought she should end her own life, I can’t believe she’s now an international athlete who competes and wins around the world. I feel as though sports has given me a second life and I want to live all of it now,” she said.
Comments
Published on Jul 28, 2026