Needless to say, their practice comes with a host of challenges, “further complicated by factors such as caste, class and regional differences. Many of them come from families who cannot or do not support their interest in the sport due to societal constraints or financial worries,” says Kunnath. “They have to regularly work around the complex physical and emotional aspect of building and maintaining their physique, while fighting the deeply ingrained expectations of how a ‘woman’ should look and what they can pursue as a ‘respectable career.’”
