Her 30-minute performance was to create awareness among girls about learning self-defence.
Minutes after her wedding was over, 22-year-old bride P Nisha dressed in her bridal saree, started performing martial arts known as Adimurai. She took weapons to perform ‘Surul vaal veechu’ and silambam sticks to carry out ‘Rettai kambu' on a cement road in front of the wedding hall in Thirukolu. She did all this for all for a good cause.
Nisha is a BCom graduate and aspiring to become a police officer. Her 30-minute performance was to create awareness among girls about learning self-defence. Nisha said, “It was not easy to perform in a sari and with the heavy make up as a bride. I used to practise martial arts in a t-shirt and track pants.”
She had started learning traditional martial arts such as ‘Silambam’, ‘Surul Vaal’, ‘Adimurai’, ‘Kalarippayattu’, and ‘Theepantham’ (fireball) three years ago as a final year college student.
Her friends also performed martial arts for an hour to entertain hundreds of villagers for around 90 minutes. Nisha said her mother Mani and her father Perumal also encouraged her to learn martial arts.
Nisha is one of the 80 people across age groups who are coached free of cost by 50 years old Mariappan of Nadukutudankadu village. After winning many local silambam competitions, Nisha won the first prize in the district in Silambam last year and came third in the State level competition in Tirupur.
Rajkumar, her husband and a farmer, supported her martial arts and wanted her to use the wedding as a platform to showcase her martial art skills. “We wanted to replace cultural events with the martial arts performance to create awareness among girls, so that incidents such as the Pollachi sexual harassment scandal and suicides such as those by medical aspirant Anitha would not take place,” he stated.
He added that girls would not take extreme steps such as suicide if they practice martial arts, as they not only strengthen their body but also their mind and give them the confidence to face challenges in life.
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 "Karate Dulhan! Bride rocks social media with her martial arts performance")
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