As she turns 90, city's first woman Olympian revisits divided skirts, other hurdles

In 1950s Bandra, every time someone would ask Francis Sequeira how he met or rather caught up with his wife Mary D'Souza--who could run an 80metre hurdle race in less than 13 seconds--the oil firm employee would say: I waited for her at the tape.

- Sharmila.Ganesan

Outpaced by her husband only in wit, D'Souza, a track-and-field athlete and field hockey champion who met Sequeira at a picnic years after she became one of India's first four women Olympians in 1952, was his equal in marriage. Leaving her household in the care of a full-time maid whose name incidentally was also Mary D'Souza, the railway sports recruiter traveled widely with her first love, the hockey stick--a sort of freedom that eluded her as the seventh of 12 children of a train driver who would say if she needed exercise she should sweep the floors instead of running around like a madwoman.

As she turns a nimble 90 this month in the obscurity of US' Atlanta, D'Souza--who stays up to play online bridge--feels age is catching up. Mumbai looks like Manhattan to her now and Bandra, too, has lost its Goa-like charm. Leaping over memories of divided skirts and divided convent school classrooms--in which Anglo-Indian children never mingled with regular Indian kids--the veteran pines for the rental bungalows, beaches, and song-and-dance picnics of the suburb in which she grew up in 151 Hill Road--a building with an Irani restaurant. We could walk to the railway station and play hockey on the municipal ground behind our building, says D'Souza, who earned her stripes in field hockey by being the only girl who played the sport with the boys.