03 January,2026 10:57 AM IST | Mumbai | Devashish Kamble
A moment from Ottam; (right) Dutee Chand at the 2017 Asian Athletics Championship in Odisha. PIC COURTESY/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
On the morning of December 19, 2006, a leading national daily ran a headline that was far removed from sportsmanship: "Man or woman?" The dig was aimed directly at Tamil Nadu athlete Santhi Soundarajan, who had just been stripped of her silver medal in the 800 metres race at the 2006 Doha Asian Games after a sex test deemed her ânot womanly enough'. In 2014, it was Olympian Dutee Chand who faced a similar wrath leading up to the Commonwealth Games. As the saga unfolded, Mumbai-based theatremaker Sapan Saran had an ear to the ground. This weekend, she brings the story to stage with Ottam.
"I read about Dutee Chand's fight for justice in 2015. Over the next five years, I researched on the various themes and strands present in the play and finished writing the script in 2019. The play was meant to open in 2020, but the pandemic brought things to a halt," she recalls. Having opened at Prithvi Festival last year, it returns to the city after a stopover at the recently concluded Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa.
On stage this weekend, Mumbaikars will meet Akai Amaran, the fictional protagonist - a composite of all the women, including Soundarajan and Chand, who dealt with the trauma of the controversial sex test regulations. Amaran is a Paraiyar girl from rural Tamil Nadu, who battles caste and class barriers to become one of India's leading track and field athletes. Her arduously created world collapses when she is asked to undertake a gender test.
There's a world of difference between âfollowing' a sport, and being a cog in the sporting system in India, Saran confirms. "I wanted to experience more, and felt the urge to meet athletes and spend time with them; not only to listen to their life-stories but also their impulses, aspirations, desires and the nuanced emotions that are only visible through immersion," she says. Eventually, the theatremaker was able to meet Dutee Chand in Hyderabad and Santhi Soundarajan in Tamil Nadu. "In fact, the choreographer Maithily Bhupatkar and I even spent a couple of days in Chennai to train with Santhi Soundarajan," she reveals.
The theatremaker describes her central character as someone who is "unaware of the intersectional complexity of her own existence." The cast and crew of Ottam, however, had to understand all the worlds that live inside Akai. "The first month of rehearsals was orientation month. There were conversations, readings, workshops and masterclasses including a talk by senior sports journalist Sharda Ugra, and a folk training workshop by Chennai based Parai player and educator Adalaarasu," she reveals. Closer to home, Mumbai-based athletics coach Cyril D'Souza helped the cast soak in the spirit with track and beach training sessions.
We're glad to hear that the play does not unfold from the gaze of an outsider, albeit a well-read, socially conscious one. Saran puts together a young cast that brings with it a diverse range of lived experiences as they come not only from various schools of theatre, but are also from different socio-economic
backgrounds.
It might as well be an open secret by now that Indian audiences love to lap up a spirited, underdog story about women in sport - think Chak De India (2007), or the Priyanka Chopra starrer Mary Kom (2014). What happens when you decide to include the reality of caste in it, we ask Saran. For the uninitiated, in 2018, Santhi Soundarajan filed a complaint against a colleague at the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu (SDAT) for harassing her over her caste. "I don't think any conversation on women empowerment is possible without talking about caste in India. That said, I don't see myself as an activist. I'm a theatremaker. My job is to ask questions, provoke and stimulate. Art looks at these minor shifts as radical moments. This cannot happen by ensuring comfort for an audience. I hope Ottam leads to discomfort," she signs off.
ON January 3 and 4; 7 pm
AT Rangshila Theatre, Harminder Singh Road, Aram Nagar Part 1, Versova.
LOG ON TO in.bookmyshow.com
ENTRY Rs 400
