GAMOCHA GIRL
The ‘Dhing Express’ is more than the sum of her parts. From ‘Mon Jai’ activism to her feats on the field, she is Assam’s new darling
After winning gold in Finland, when Hima Das called the members of Mon Jai (‘I wish’)—an activist group she had founded in 2013—the first thing she wanted to know was if the perpetrators of the two ghastly murders in train toilets in Assam a couple of days back had been arrested. News of the murders had agitated her. Just a few years ago, she used to travel all alone at night in empty train compartments to Dhing railway station—the nearest to her home at Kandhulimari village in Assam’s Nagaon district. “She used to take the train after tournaments in Guwahati and other places. I always felt scared for her, but Hima believed God would always protect her,” says father Ranjit Das.
So when Hima heard about the two women who got murdered in a span of 24 hours, she was worried. “She’s always been socially aware. She fights back whenever she sees injustice,” says Bhaskar Jyoti Nath, the Mon Jai member who had got the call. That awareness is what made her an active member of the All Assam Students Union (AASU), the influential pressure group which led the sixyearlong Assam agitation. From helping flood victims in her district to leading a vigil against illegal liquor shops, Hima has literally “run” whenever “Assam needed her”. The Assamese pride is evident as Hima carries the local gamocha everywhere she goes. In Finland, the gamocha took pride of place along the national flag.
The running began early in life as her father was a districtlevel football player. He used to run to stay fit, and Hima—the eldest of four sibings—always joined him. Indeed, soon she was the default running champion in her school—the Dhing Public High School. In 2014, Shamshul Haq, a trainer at the Navodoya School, noticed her at an interschool running competition and was so impressed he took her to Nagaon town to meet Gauri Shankar Roy, a sports trainer. Under Roy’s supervision, Hima won her first gold in the interdistrict running championships in 2016. At the Assam state championships in 2016, her first competitive race on record, she bagged a silver.
The next destination was Guwahati, where Roy introduced the ‘Dhing Express’ to coaches Nipon Das and Nabajit Malakar, from the Directorate of Sports and Youth Welfare. Her first formal training began in 2017 at the Sarusajai sports complex in Guwahati. Here also—like at her village’s football grounds— Hima preferred to practise with the boys. “She wanted tougher competition to improve her performance,” says Nipon Das.
Such was their faith in Hima’s abilities that the two coaches took loans to send her to the 2017 World Youth Championships in Nairobi, Kenya, where she competed in the 200 metre sprint and finished fifth. Now it was time to graduate to distance running. In March 2018, she competed for the first time in a 400 metres event at the Patiala Federation Cup. The Indian trials for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games came a month later. “We had no clue she was going for a big competition such as the Commonwealth Games,” says Ranjit. Even when the family watched the IAAF World U20 meet in Finland on TV, they did not realise the significance of the event as Hima had told her that it was a “tiny tournament”.
Mother Jonali smiles sheepishly but declined to comment on the advice of Hima’s icon Zubeen Garg—Assam’s biggest singing star—that she should now start eating beef to increase her strength (the family doesn’t eat meat at home, though Hima has got a taste for it after moving to Guwahati). “Hima idolises him but it is not necessary that she has to pay heed to everything he says,” says Mon Jai’s Bhaskar, who evidently doesn’t approve.
He, however, admits the name Mon Jai was borrowed from the film of the same title, made by Zubeen. A month ago, during the interstate championships in Guwahati when Hima clocked her personal best of 51.13 seconds, the athlete screamed out “Mon jai” and her supporters chanted back the same in unison.
Till now, Hima’s progress has been at a very high pace. From running free in the fields just two years ago, to creating history for the country, it has been a fairytale journey for Hima. Next up, the country waits to see if she can do a repeat of her recordbreaking effort at the Asian Games in August.