Meet Majizia Bhanu

Keralas powerful woman.

- Unni Attingal

Who is Majizia Bhanu? Every Indian should be able to answer this question now, without a second thought. Majizia Bhanu is Kerala’s female face of muscular power and now, the world's. She is the first woman in the world to take part in powerlifting, donning a hijab. Majizia is the daughter of Abdul Majeed and Razia Majeed, from Kalleri Moiloth house. She hails from Orkkatteri, Calicut.

Majizia was a sports prodigy from her childhood and had amassed many general category sports titles. The sheer lack of basic infrastructure and training support in the remote village she hails from makes the glory of her conquests magnified manifold. She had started developing a liking for boxing first. But, she used to wear braces at the time, which would seriously deter her advances and expose her to dangerous turns in the game. The turning point in her journey came, however, when she completed her schooling and joined the Mahe Institute of Dental Science in 2016, as a BDS student. That’s when she started training for power lifting. That was the start of an era of ‘The Iron Lady in Hijab’.