CHENNAI: A salary of Rs 6000 a month and getting to see their daughters Sathiya and Pushpa Senthilkumar just once a year — this was the norm for Manjula after her husband and farmer Senthilkumar passed away in 2012. She was working in a garment factory in Tiruppur to support her family. Before Senthilkumar's demise, life in a small home with a thatched roof in Mudikandanallur along the banks of river Kollidam in Nagapattinam district was all about trying to raise their daughters and help them take up sport.
Years later, Manjula's daughters have earned themselves a name in basketball and are well settled with jobs in the Indian Railways. "I never knew the game of basketball until Class 10," said Pushpa after her team Railways breezed past Gujarat 101-17 in the quarterfinals of the Senior National Basketball championship here on Friday. The started to play by accident. She and her elder sister Sathiya were initially netball players residing at the sports hostel run by Sports Authority of India in Mayiladuthurai. "However, netball was not popular. The SAI removed it and we switched to basketball," she said.
From there on, Pushpa picked up the sport and in 2017, got her first breakthrough representing Tamil Nadu in at the senior nationals. "I was the youngest in the team. We finished a creditable fifth, followed by a runners-up finish in the next year," explained the power forward. Then in 2019, she was picked by the Railways team. Almost seven years on from her stint there, she has seen imperious growth in the sport including playing for India in two FIBA Asia Cup Tournaments (Division A in 2021 and Division B in 2025) and has received all kinds of praise. But one thing that soothed her heart after earning the job was that her mother can now rest.
"With that meagre salary, she tried to send us two-three thousand a month. We had no support from our family relatives after our father's demise," she said. Currently she works as a senior clerk in the South Central Railways in Hyderabad. Her sister Sathiya works in the South Western Railways in Bengaluru.
Now, going back to her village as a India national team player, Pushpa sees positive changes in perception over sport. "I used to get comments on the way I dress and many doubted whether we would make it in sport. A few even tried to convince my mother that pursuing sport may not be successful, but she did not pay heed to their words. Now that I have a job in the Railways, my mother still gets calls from a lot of people on how to get their children into sport. I actually saw a couple of children from the village residing in the SDAT hostel here," she remarked. While her achievements helped put her village on the map, she claims that it needs to be developed more. "The number of buses coming to the village still remains low. If kids today miss the bus in the morning, they are left to walk for around half-an hour to their schools in Manalmedu, the village nearby.
With an important year ahead, Pushpa expressed excitement over the India Basketball League (IBL). "Indians here will be benefitted by playing with foreigners," she said. Officials from the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) have said that the league is expected to begin later this year. Post the senior nationals which concludes with the final on Sunday, Pushpa will be showing up at the IBL High Performance Centre (HPC) in Bengaluru to train under Sarah Gayler of the United States of America.
Results: Quarterfinals: Women: Railways 101 bt Gujarat 17; TN 72 bt Maharashtra 70; MP 64 bt Karnataka 63; Kerala 91 bt Delhi 54. Men: UP 93 bt Rajasthan 90; Delhi 80 bt Karnataka 73; Railways 82 bt Telangana 53, TN 87 bt Kerala 57.
