India's first skater girl on Olympics 2021, proud moment for India

2021 is the first year we'll see skateboarding at the Olympics. Bengaluru-based Atita Verghese is prepping the next-generation of skateboarders from India.

Atita Verghese breaks into a little laughter when I tell her why I am calling. “You are not the first one to ask me if I know about this film,” she says about Skater Girl, which follows the life of a village girl in Rajasthan as she discovers skateboarding and fights gender norms and poverty to go, compete at a national tournament.

Verghese was 19 when she first stepped on to the deck of a skateboard, which her friend had lent her. This was 2012, when there were no more than 10 skateboarders in India, and surely no female skateboarders.

Thereon, Verghese has co-built four skate parks and a handful of other skate spots in India. She has taught the newbies, and played a part to bring this underground sport out in the open. By 2018, she became the first Indian to join American skateboarding brand Vans' team of athletes.

Since 2015, Verghese has been running an online platform called Girl Skate India, which holds skateboarding workshops and tours for girls and women from all backgrounds. She has taught in the IT city of Bengaluru as also in Janwar, a village of thatched huts and dusty roads in Madhya Pradesh - the challenge of bringing girls into a ‘boy’s sport’ apply everywhere.

“In Bengaluru, parents send their girls to skate parks easily but they may not want them to stay outside for long hours. And without practice, they can’t make progress in the sport,” Verghese says over a call from Goa, where she is currently staying.

“On the other hand, in Janwar, we had to go door-to-door to convince, actually beg, the parents to send their girls to the skate park, which is just down the road in their own village," Verghese says. "Male members were a big obstacle. ‘Who will make rotis?’ they would ask us. But we did not take ‘no’ for an answer and managed to get 40 girls to play in the skate park for two hours.” A few parents followed and stood at the edge of the park, watching their girls, “even the shy ones”, go down the slope on a plank of wood and fly in the air with abandon.

It was the same euphoria at the Kovalam skate club in Kerala, where she had gone to teach young girls as part of India’s first all-female skateboarding tour in 2015. “They were smiling ear-to-ear. It was hard to stop them,” Verghese remembers. In a heartening development, two teenage girls, who come to this club from a fishing community nearby, have won gold medals at the national level. They even feature in Skater Girl, their coach Vineeth Vijayan says.

Vijayan is concerned, though. He isn't sure about how long the girls' parents might let them skate - their national level gold medals notwithstanding. “'The girls have hit puberty, and now they are expected to stay at home and help in the kitchen or they won’t find a husband easily',” is what the parents tell him.

Verghese, on the other hand, was fortunate to have the support of her feminist mother, who loves sports herself. She let her fall, get up and embrace.