The entire Rurki village will gather in front of a laptop, installed outside a boxing academy, to watch their pride in the 48 kg event of the World Boxing Championship in Liverpool on Sunday evening.

Minakhshi Hooda, the 24-year-old, stunned two-time Asian bronze medalist Lutsaikhany Altensetseg of Mongolia to ensure her birth in the final before taking on Nazym Kzaibay of Kazakhstan in the final. Naturally, Minakshi’s most prestigious bout so far has changed her father Srikrishan Hooda’s daily routine, which has been the same for almost last two-and-a-half decades.

Srikishan will be driving around the city of Rohtak in Haryana between 8:30am and 6pm, searching for passengers he can ferry in his auto-rickshaw. Sometimes he becomes late while returning home, but for the most part, this schedule is set in stone.

But since Saturday, on the day of the semifinal match, his daughter won and reached the final, Srikrishan’s daily routine has changed. He dropped off his final passenger of the day by 4:00 PM. He then returned home, travelling almost 20 kilometers from Rohtak to watch her daughter’s bout.

There’s no way Srikrishan is going to miss this bout. It’s a choice he’s glad he made, for he gets to see his daughter Minakshi win the most important bout of her career.

Minakshi is the youngest of four siblings – two other sisters and one brother. None of them played sports, nor did anyone in their family. Sports came to Rurki fortuitously through self-taught coach Vijay Hooda, who started a boxing academy in 2013 primarily as a way to keep kids out of trouble.

As she saw other girls go and train in the academy, in 2018, Minakshi too decided she would go. While she was keen, her father initially was against the idea.

“I didn’t have anything against her boxing. But I didn’t think I could afford the cost of raising a sportsperson. I could barely afford the roof over our heads. I didn’t have land or a job. I didn’t even own my auto rickshaw but instead rented it out. How would I be able to afford a sports person’s specialized diet or her equipment?” Shrikrishan recalled.

It was the coach Vijay Hooda who convinced Shrikrishan to let his daughter play.

“At that time, I was trying to get as many children to join the academy as possible. But I also thought there was something special about Minakshi. She was tall for her age, but also much lighter than girls of her height. That’s the physical quality you want in a boxer. I told her father that I’d support her expenses as much as possible, but he needed to let her train. I even got some of her classmates who were training at the academy to convince her father,” he says.