'There were days when we didn't know where the next meal will come from,' Khel Ratna Rani Rampal on her journey

'I won't rest till I win an Olympic medal. Even after all these years, what keeps me going is the honour of wearing the India jersey. That joy is incomparable,' Rani said on being conferred with the Khel Ratna award.

Shantanu Srivastava



New Delhi: It is hard to dissociate India's women's hockey captain from the tired trope of Haryana's gender ratio. Sure, there are more prisms and perspectives to look at Rani Rampal from than the oft-quoted skewed sex ratio of the state she comes from, but somehow, Haryana's abysmal record has found a way to foretell her remarkable rise. Call it destiny, if you must.