NEW DELHI: For Kurash athlete Pincky, the death of her father came just 15 days before the Junior Nationals. Despite the personal loss, she continued training and competed in the tournament, drawing strength from the belief that she was carrying forward her father's dream.
“I don't want anyone to sympathise with me,” she said, describing how sport taught her to confront defeat and keep going.
Pincky's account was among several personal experiences shared by athletes and other participants on the sidelines of an interaction with philosopher Acharya Prashant, where conversations ranged from sporting pressure and bereavement to loneliness, marriage and the pursuit of happiness.
For Pincky, the challenge extended beyond the sporting arena. She said she was the first sportsperson from her village to reach her level, while women around her faced expectations about marriage. She also spoke about the pressure of winning medals, which can bring recognition, employment and financial support.
“In our society, girls are suppressed,” she said, arguing that women, too, can achieve sporting success. “Acharya ji’s emphasis on women empowerment is what connected me to him,” she added.
She spoke to the newspaper during one of the sessions by Acharya Prashant on Ashtavakra Gita that was hosted on Sunday.
Some other participants, who were also present at the session and have been followers of Acharya Prashant for a long time, described confronting expectations that had shaped their understanding of life.
Ruchi, a working professional from Kanpur who said she grew up in a small village, recalled believing that a woman's responsibilities were to marry, have children and look after the household.
However, after listening to Prashant's teachings for five years, she said her outlook had changed. She now lives alone in Delhi and has reconsidered the place marriage should occupy in her life.
On the other hand, Sheebu Singh, a nursing officer at AIIMS in New Delhi, spoke about the emotional trauma she experienced after her husband's death, when their son was two years old. She said Prashant's Bhagavad Gita sessions helped her regain strength and question the social belief that a woman cannot live without her husband.
While sharing experiences, a 47-year-old sub-inspector with the Chhattisgarh Police, Pooja Choubey also described experiencing loneliness as her children grew older and the distance between her and her husband increased. She said the teachings had helped her feel stronger mentally and physically.
The search for fulfilment, however, extends beyond personal relationships. In case of Kanika, who began listening to Prashant while pursuing a PhD in the United States, said she had come to recognise how her definitions of success and happiness depended on external expectations.
Speaking to the newspaper on similar lines, Prashant argued that people often allow social expectations and the ego to distort their choices. “The pressure is not because life is tough; the pressure is because there is this ego inside,” he said.
Additionally, addressing people’s concern about fear of the future, he argued that people often create frightening scenarios through their own expectations and imagination, which can prevent them from making decisions they believe are right.
He also drew a distinction between changing external circumstances and examining oneself, saying that self-understanding was essential to making choices freely.
Across the conversations, the struggles were different: grief for one, sporting setbacks for another, and the pressure of social conventions or conventional measures of success for others. What connected their accounts was the effort to reassess those pressures and develop greater confidence in their own decisions.