Growing up in a small village of Dhatika, Odisha, Hupi Majhi was never meant to do anything more than getting married in her teens, raising her kids in her youth and growing old without knowing anything else about the outside world.



Unable to speak in any other language but Santhal, she started fearing the thought of meeting strangers and sharing a quick chat with them. Asking for help made her feel nervous so she resorted to staying in pain and misery. That was a while ago, in 2005, when she was just eight years old.



Ever since, Hupi has achieved numerous feats including helping the Indian rugby team to its best-ever finish at an international tournament — runner-up at the Asia Rugby Women’s Sevens Trophy at the time, back in 2017.

With her confidence renewed and her personality completely transformed over the years, Hupi is now one of the most feared wing players in the world of international rugby. Most of her opposing sides normally have just one gameplay: to put as many players on her as it takes to stop her from scoring. That has got to count for something.



Hupi has come a long way from only communicating in her native tongue and she has even mastered talking in hindi. Now, she is completely comfortable in having lengthy conversations with anyone and everyone.



Her success, not only as an athlete but also in developing this confident persona, has a lot to do with the kind of opportunities she was presented with, thanks to the government initiatives like the Khelo India University Games which is currently underway in Bhubaneswar.

Following the international culture of conducting University Games, Khelo India has taken a brilliant step in order to come up with the most talented athletes at an early age. This helps organisations like the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) provide them with good quality training and help them become a success at the greatest sporting stages of the world, including the Olympics.

During the event, the Odisha Star said, “I belong to a family where everyone was worried about my marriage. They felt that as a girl I should not go out and play because how will I get a good husband if I broke my leg or got big scars?”



“But ever since they saw me become something of my own, play for India both on our soil and foreign, they have stopped asking about it. Now they let me follow my own career path and that pressure of getting married as soon as possible is off my shoulders,” she added.



Hupi’s teammate and India centre, Rajani Sabar too has a similar story in which she was discouraged to play rugby because “it was a game only muscular boys played” but once they saw her fly in an aeroplane - the first in her family to do so, and help India win the Asia Women’s Div-1 Rugby 15s championship bronze in the Philippines in 2019, their perspective changed.

