This summer is Olympic summer, so what better July HerStory recipient than a track and field star? But, we aren’t honoring just any track and field star, folks, this month, our HerStory person is Man Kaur, a remarkable woman who started her much-honored athletic career at the age of 93 (and no, that is not a typo!).
In 2009, when Man Kaur was 93, her 79 year old son encouraged her to take up track and field. He remained her coach throughout her career. He took her to the track on a whim; he wanted to both connect with her and keep her fit. Kaur enjoyed it enough to want to return. She liked running, and she quickly she started to improve and get faster. Two years later, her son registered her for international events he was participating in and the rest, as they say, was history!
Born in 1916 in the now-defunct kingdom of Patiala in India, Kaur was raised by her paternal grandparents after her mother died in childbirth. School held no allure for her; she rarely went. She recalled earning coins for weaving drawstrings for pajamas as well as collecting twigs from the neem tree to sell as natural toothbrushes. She also milled wheat by hand and spun thread (she had loads of what we today call side hustles). In the early 1930s, Kaur found employment as a nanny and maid to one of the 360 queens of the maharaja of Patiala. She worked in the palace, serving one of the queens and minding the prince. Kaur got married in 1934 and went on to have three children. Later, she became a cook, working for families in many homes across the city.
And then she discovered athletics. She and her son traveled all around the world competing. His wife had passed, and the pleasure both he and his mother got from competing in track and field events inspired him to sell most of his possessions to use the money for entry fees and travel. They secured government housing near the stadium they trained in, and lived a modest life, revolving around their sport.
One of the lovely stories we read as we researched for this love letter told of a full-circle event: remember that Kaur worked at the Patiala palace as a maid, getting a monthly salary of 10 rupees (equivalent to 15 cents today) in the 1930s. In 2016, she was invited to run in a 5-kilometer run in Patiala, which she ran the first few hundred meters, and she was invited to spend the night at the palace, in the bedroom of the queen she’d worked for. In an article found on NPR, she quoted a Punjabi saying: “What you ask for, you never get. It’s better to accept your blessings as they come.”
In India, the Blue Lotus flower symbolizes the expansion of the soul and the unfolding of the individual. We chose this flower to represent this amazing woman who, after a full life, still found ways to expand and unfold in her final few decades, and came to be an inspiration for people of all ages.
