They are making a movie on the lives of these two octogenarian women shooters, but the village is still loath to let go of patriarchy

A signboard with the words ‘Shooter Dadi’ welcomes those who enter Johri village in Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat district. After all, Johri’s claim to fame this past decade has been a pair of intrepid sharpshooters, sisters-in-law Chandro Tomar and Prakashi Tomar, now octogenarians, whose unusual and rule-breaking journey to fame has been documented several times.

Johri and the two women are back in the spotlight, with a movie being made around their lives. The dadis quit shooting some years ago, and now stroll around their farms and play with their grandchildren.

I reach Johri, some three hours from Delhi, on a rainy morning. I am directed to a vast haveli with a neem tree in its courtyard. Chandro emerges in a full-sleeved white shirt and blue ghagra, a pale pink dupatta covering her head. She has the air of having interacted with the media for decades. After the initial greetings, she goes back inside to change into “better clothes” for the photo shoot, and then poses like a pro, victory sign and all.

A corner of the house is filled with medals. The green walls have photos of her with celebrities, the latest being with actors Taapsee Pannu and Bhumi Pednekar, who will play the sisters-in-law in the upcoming film.

It all began in 1998 when a makeshift shooting range was opened in Johri by Rajpal Singh, former shooting coach, who founded the Johri Rifle Association. Village youngsters flocked to the range to learn shooting, and among them was Chandro’s granddaughter Shefali Tomar, now an international trap shooter. “It wasn’t considered safe for girls to go alone anywhere, so I went with her,” smiles Chandro.

Chandro recalls how Shefali was initially nervous, till one day Chandro walked up to her and said, “Main dikhaati hun kaise karte hain” (let me show you how it’s done), and shot a bullseye. “The coach asked me to do it again, and that’s how the journey began. No one in the family knew we were going to the range; I used to lie that I was going to the fields.”

Till that moment, life for Chandro had revolved around veils, children, cattle and the farm. Married when she was 15, her life was strictly monitored. “So when I got a chance, I didn’t want to let go,” she says. Her secret was found out only when a photograph was published in a local newspaper. It led to a storm, with family and neighbours mocking her and demanding that she stop. She refused.

82-year-old Prakashi Tomar. Photo: R.V. Moorthy

Meanwhile, her sister-in-law Prakashi entered shooting in a similar way, persuaded by her daughter Seema Tomar, who went on to win the silver medal in the ISSF World Shotgun Cup 2010 in Dorset. Over the years, as Chandro and Prakashi won medals, often going up to the pre-national tournament stage in the veterans segment, their fame as women who had broken barriers of age, patriarchy and tradition grew. More importantly, their success and Rajpal Singh’s shooting range fostered a culture of shooting that has now produced some of India’s finest shooters and turned all of Baghpat into fertile medal-hunting ground.

Shooting out of sight

The two dadis continue to encourage girls and women to take up shooting and other sports. “Ladki bachao, ladki padhao aur ladki khilao,” the two say. “I used to go door to door asking people to send their daughters to the shooting range and the men would refuse. Sometimes, the women would agree and send their daughters in secret,” recalls Chandro.

Young shooters at a training session. Photo: R.V. Moorthy

At the Johri shooting range, though, there are only some 20 girls. Girls and boys have a brick tied to their wrists for strength and concentration. Manvi, 15, a Class X student, is a national-level shooter. She pays ₹500 a month to use the range for three hours, six days a week, after school. She was brought here by her mother who used to clean the floors of the shooting range. “If my parents don’t get me married then I want to become an international level shooter,” says Manvi.

Dolly Jatav, all of 11, is the star and poster girl of the academy. Dolly used to once work with her parents in a brick kiln. She won a silver medal in the U.P. State Shooting Championship in air pistol shooting, and dreams of representing India globally one day. “Mummy kehti hai dekhengey (mother says, we’ll see),” she says.

But even now, more than half the trainees at the range are boys. Hari Om Tomar, 17, is from a village nearby. He has shot nationally. “The infrastructure is good and affordable,” he says.

Students come to Johri from nearby villages and some from as far away as Loni in Ghaziabad. Those who don’t pursue shooting as a sport, get jobs as security guards or join the security forces. Rajpal wants the dadis to visit his range often and attract more girls to the sport. He wants to ultimately hand over the shooting range to Nita Ambani, he says, showing me a picture of her visiting the range. He is waiting for the day “at least 50 girls sign up.”

Women don’t talk

Despite the famous dadis, though, this might not happen overnight. A few metres from Chandro’s house lives Pawan Kumar. He doesn’t want his wife named, and we watch as she walks about doing chores, sari firmly covering her head. She hasn’t studied and doesn’t step out of the house unless “asked to”. The men of the family do all the talking because the women are “not allowed to”.

“The dadis have brought fame and development to the village,” says Kapil Tomar, 25, a farmer. “But women their age or even younger women don’t indulge in all this.” Sitting next to him is Sher Singh, 30, who works in Delhi. He says Johri girls are not allowed to step out after sunset or wear jeans or use social media. They are mostly married off after high school.

Surely all that’s changing now, since there are more women shooters from the village? “Change kya aana hai? Jo chal raha hai sahi hai. (What change? Whatever is going on is fine),” says Singh. Ironically, Chandro never pushed her own daughters-in-law into the sport. “They weren’t interested,” she says.

She used to train girls from Sirsa in Haryana, Patiala in Punjab, and even from Bihar, using household chores for muscle strengthening. She would ask them to hold a jug of water to learn stillness, clean floors with broom and mop, or wring clothes dry to strengthen fingers. So why hasn’t she trained any women in Johri yet? “No one has ever asked,” she says.

In many ways, revolution and reality continue hand in hand in Johri. In the star shooter’s household, it’s still Dolly who wakes at 5 a.m. to bathe, pray and exercise before she tends to the cattle and takes care of her four siblings. Only then can she go shooting.

hemani.b@thehindu.co.in