Fit to core: Kashmiri women smash patriarchy

At the break of dawn, young Arifa Bilal puts on her trainers, wears a pheran over her tracksuit, adjusts her headscarf, slings a bag across her shoulder, and leaves her home in Beehama village. 

She speed-walks on a meandering path running alongside the swift-flowing Sind in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal to her gym 3km away, where a bubbly bunch of women awaits.

Arifa is the first Kashmiri woman to win three gold medals in national powerlifting and weightlifting championships – a feat that found plaudits like “Iron Lady” appended to her name.

Going to the gym was always part of her routine. She has been training in Doctor Gym for more than six years and owes it to this fitness centre for powering her passion for weightlifting. Also for helping her, and many, break social taboos in a conservative society that frowns upon women playing physical sports.

Arifa recalls how her elder sister used to chaperon her to the gym those early years, wait till she completes her routine and take her back home. 

“I used to be the only girl in the gym. Things have changed a lot now. I have trained more than 200 women this year alone,” said the athlete in her early twenties who doubles up as a trainer.

Inside the well-equipped gym, the women break sweat. Some are pounding on a cross-trainer, others doing downward dogs or training with weights. 

When I started out, people in the neighbourhood used to whisper behind me. Negatively. People took a dim view of me going to the gym, doing exercises, push-ups, and lifting weights in a tracksuit.

A girl in a hijab walks over to a bar loaded with two heavy plates. She grips the bar, arms spread out wide, and drops her hip. Her back straight, her feet planted firmly, her elbows locked out. The veins in her neck pop out with the weight in her hands. She breathes hard and drops it with a thud. Her gym buddies applaud the deadlift. 

Health before taboo 

Arifa, fellow fitness trainer Mehreen, law graduate Razia, and scores of others are trailblazers who are not just breaking new ground in patriarchal Kashmir but upending social norms that assume a women’s proper place is in the home. 

They are smashing stereotypes about women leading home-bound lives.

Not so long ago, many families would consider the gym a waste of money. Others believed women’s gyms and the body-hugging sportswear and pop music that go with them are an immoral western import. Sport for females is immodest.

Many women wouldn’t tell anyone where they’re going. Many were forced to hide their passion due to their gender and conservative background.

“When I started out, people in the neighbourhood used to whisper behind me. Negatively. People took a dim view of me going to the gym, doing exercises, push-ups, and lifting weights in a tracksuit. I didn’t balk,” said Aliya Mir, owner of the first women-only gym in downtown Srinagar. 

The negative attitude towards women going to the gym changed for the better over the past few years, particularly after the coronavirus pandemic called attention to health and fitness. Sedentary lifestyle is giving rise to obesity and related diseases among women, according to health experts, and they need to watch their weight. 

Exercise is necessary for a person’s physical and mental wellbeing, especially women spending most of their time at home, said Dr Mohmmad Saleem Bhat, who teaches medicine in Srinagar’s government medical college.

For the ladies only 

Female-only gyms are opening the doors for women to live a healthy lifestyle and keep diseases at bay. Ganderbal homemaker Shazia was diagnosed with PCOD (polycystic ovarian disease) and she’s already feeling better working out a month in the gym. 

“I gained weight after marriage and couldn’t walk far without getting short of breath,” she said. 

Women’s interest in being healthy overshadowed their fear of getting criticised for going to a gym. 

Fitness centres for women got encouraged for the first time in Kashmir. Gyms with high-tech machines, and thumping soundtracks began to become popular among educated and professional women in cities and soon spread to villages.

Razia Mushtaq, a law graduate and fitness trainer, recently opened 313 Fitness Club in Kangan, a remote village of farmers in central Kashmir. 

“I struggled initially, but now there are scores of young girls and women training at my gym,” Razia said. Hers is a female-only gym because “women don’t find it comfortable exercising with men”. 

Many gyms are focusing on classes that are more tailored to their clients, like a strength and conditioning programme for women 40 and up. 

Offering classes in everything from aerobics to Zumba, a dance workout, these gyms have boosted women’s confidence, and provided a meeting place where they could socialise.

The gym-goers say workout is vital to relieve stress. No doubt, the muscle that gets more exercise than any other in these gyms is the “zygomaticus major” – the one most responsible for our smile.

The lead image at the top shows a group of girls getting fitness tips from a trainer at Doctor Gym in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal (Photo by Nasir Yousufi)

Nasir Yousufi is a journalist based at Srinagar.