NEW DELHI: For Asian Games medallist Pincky, her father’s death just 15 days before the Junior Nationals devastated her. Despite the loss, she continued training and competed, determined to fulfil his 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 pressure and bereavement to loneliness, marriage and the pursuit of happiness.
For Pincky, the challenge extended beyond sporting arena. Women in her native village faced expectations about marriage. “In our society, girls are suppressed,” she said, arguing that women, too, can achieve success. “Acharya ji’s emphasis on women empowerment drew me to him,” she added.
In a conversation with the newspaper during one of the sessions by Acharya Prashant on the Ashtavakra Gita on Sunday, Sheebu Singh, a nursing officer at AIIMS, mentioned the emotional trauma she experienced after her husband’s death, with a two-years-old son. She said Prashant’s Bhagavad Gita sessions helped her regain strength and question the social belief that a woman cannot live without her husband.
Prashant echoed these views, arguing that social expectations and ego often distort people’s choices. “The pressure is not because life is tough; the pressure is because there is this ego inside,” he said.
Due to the fear of the future, he said people often let imagined worst-case scenarios and expectations hold them back from making decisions they believe are right. He also stressed the importance of self-understanding over merely changing external circumstances, saying it was essential to making choices freely.
While their struggles ranged from grief and sporting setbacks to the pressures of social conventions and conventional measures of success, a common thread ran through their accounts: the effort to challenge these pressures and trust their own decisions.
