Hail Mary: Hockey player Mary D'Souza being honoured with Dhyan Chand Award

The presence of the first Indian woman at the Olympics owes a great deal to a dance. The year was 1952. Mary D’Souza had been selected to represent India at the Helsinki Olympics.

She had no coach, no trainer and no funds; the government was only paying airfare. Luckily for D’Souza, she was a Bandra girl. Her neighbours and friends organised a dance and she managed to raise enough money. D’Souza was one of four women the first women from India, and one of the first in the world to attend the quadrennial event.        

Mary D’Souza (Sequeira), 81, is one of those forgotten names in India’s sporting history. Her accomplishments are many yet it has taken the government 62 years to recognise them and choose her for the Dhyan Chand award, India’s highest award for lifetime achievement in sports and games.

She received the award on Saturday. She learnt about her impending award through the papers. D’Souza, however, is happy. “Recognition is important as it inspires the younger generation to have courage and determination, no matter the adversity,” she says.

Adversity is no stranger to D’Souza. She grew up as a tomboy, one of 12 siblings and with a father who disapproved of his daughters playing sports. “He told me that if I wanted exercise, I could do the housework instead of running about,” she says.

Her days spent with a group of boys, playing hockey, triggered her passion for sports besides hockey and athletics she played badminton and table tennis for the Railways. D’Souza studied till high school and then taught and played hockey at St Joseph’s School. “We didn’t have a field at St Joseph’s so at night, I would jump over the wall and train on the St Andrew’s ground next door. Back then, girls weren’t allowed to train with boys,” she says.

Her introduction to competitive sport happened because of her cousin, Maxi Vaz and Sacru Menezes, both well-known hockey players. They urged her to participate in a sports meet. She ran and came second in her first race. This whetted her appetite.

A few years later, D’Souza would become the fastest athlete in India. She became a regular feature in newspapers for breaking track records at the national games and in the Asian Games. She has met with Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi and various heads of states the photos with them are now mildewed, the fault of an errant maid.

Back home, things changed too. There was a time when her father, incensed by the fact that she chose to participate in a hockey game when it was her turn to collect the family ration, took the cane to her. A couple of years later, her father would proudly show people newspaper clippings of the same tomboy daughter.

D’Souza’s achievements and records have all happened on her own merit. “If I hadn’t started so late in life and had proper training, I would’ve won many more medals,” she says. “I have overcome a lot,” she says frankly. “We never got paid anything...we had no corporate sponsors, no funding,” she says.

D'Souza never had a coach, except for Dhyan Chand when he trained the Indian women’s hockey team. The women’s athletics team at the Helsinki Olympics had no coach. On the personal front too, things weren’t good. She brought up her three children by herself, on a meagre railways salary.

Her hardships helped her bond better with sprinter Jesse Owens. “He was a legend and I am lucky to have known him. He was a kind, fun loving and friendly soul. His life, like mine was filled will hardship and adversity,” she says. At the Helsinki Olympics which she describes as a “college event where everyone knew everybody else”, she made many friends, many of whom kept in touch with her long after the Games.

“People were really friendly. We were two women participating in athletics and the US men’s relay team asked us about our starting blocks. We had none, so they gave us their own,” she says. D’Souza carried her starting block home and used it for many years before passing it to her daughter Marissa, also an athlete.

Marissa played basketball, hockey, and ran track at the National level but was told by her mother , “You cannot eat your fame so let sports remain just a hobby”. D’Souza saw no long term future in sports for her daughter, having witnessed it herself.

“There were Olympic medal winners who were truck drivers and fruit vendors in my day. India won her first individual medal at Helsinki freestyle wrestler Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav claimed the bronze. Jadhav was also supposed to go to the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 but the government refused to pay for the trip,” she says.

A few athletes have been given subsidised accommodation but D’Souza got nothing. She still lives in a rented apartment in Bandra and is facing eviction.  A few years ago, the government introduced a pension scheme for athletes which has helped her sustain herself. D’Souza is an Aldona girl but hasn’t received any recognition from the Goan government.

Her Dhyan Chand Award was a lucky break. The president of Athletics Association of India (AAFI), Adille Sumariwalla, was an Olympian who knew D’Souza from back when he was a volunteer, official at sports meets. “It took someone who knew about me to support my case,” she says.

The Olympian and World Cup hockey player has had a tough life but she won’t complain. Instead, she wants to share her story in the hope that it could prove to be an inspiration for athletes to never give up. Marissa is currently on the look out for a good writer to chronicle her mother’s story, the title of which would probably be, ‘There’s something about Mary’.