Punching her way up

With her second gold at the World Boxing Championship, Nikhat Zareen is silently winning battles for women in India too

- Rudraneil Sengupta

Nikhat Zareen does not speak. Inside the boxing hall at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in NewDelhi, India’s elite women boxers are in high spirits—the Women’s World Boxing Championship is just days away (it was held in March this year), and everyone’s raring to go. They are in little groups, laughing and talking, warming up, lifting weights, wrapping their hands in bandages, working the heavy bags and pads. Zareen, 26, talks to no one, she has no music in her ears, her mouth is a tight, grim line. You look at her eyes. They have a kind of unyielding ferocity that’s almost scary. You realise with a start that Zareen will come out with a second-world title.