Style, Sass, and Squash

Dipika Pallikal talks about her journey to become one of the world’s best squash players, her love for travel and why she prefers stylish cars.

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Dipika Pallikal is effortlessly glamorous. The camera seems to be in love with her as she poses against the backdrop of the sea at a beach in her hometown of Chennai. She is young, stylish, efficacious and, above all, an achiever in the true sense. As India’s premier squash player, Pallikal has been in the limelight from a young age and has handled it extremely well. And she can't help but notice what a striking car the Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza is.

We are at Olive Beach in Chennai — she grew up five minutes away from here —and Pallikal speaks passionately about the sport she has been in love with since the age of 10. Interestingly though, squash happened to her by chance. 'I started playing tennis at a local academy but never really enjoyed it as one had to queue up to play,' she says.

Tennis’s loss was squash’s gain. Her friend was going to play squash one day and Pallikal decided to accompany her. Till that point she didn’t even know what squash was but just wanted to spend time with her friend. Soon it was evident that she was very good at it and hasn’t looked back since.

'It wasn’t easy,' she says, 'as I have been away from home since the age of 13.' She has lived in Egypt for five years, and a couple of years in the USA and Australia in her quest to become a world-class squash player. She was living on her own in a foreign land and didn’t do any of the things that define one’s teenage years. 'I don’t have any regrets as I was clear that I was doing it for my passion,' she says.