Twenty-six-year-old Indrani Chakrabarty is a known face in the Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) circuit of the region, working towards creating awareness about and promoting MMA among the youngsters. She holds an upper brown belt in Kyokush in Karate, is a certified MMA and Kettle Bell coach and the proud co-owner of Datsbi MMA. She has participated in and won multiple district and national level tournaments, National Kyokushin Karate Tournament and MMA National Championship.
Indrani originally hails from Silchar where she had a very difficult childhood being born in a male dominated society where girl children weren’t accepted. However, with her parents’ support, she completed her matriculation from HP Dev Sishu Mandir and further pursued higher secondary studies from Ramanuj Gupta Junior College (Commerce). Then, she moved to Guwahati to pursue BBA from Guwahati Commerce College. Right after graduation, Indrani started working in a real estate company while simultaneously pursuing M.Com from Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). Having worked in the real estate sector for over five years, Indrani has started her own real estate marketing company ‘IADS Realtors’ in partnership with her MMA coach.
“I was the third girl child in a male dominated family and I wasn’t accepted by my family. My parents had to go through many hardships just to convince the society of my presence. Even today, the society has trouble accepting my views and career decisions. But my parents stood as my pillars, supported me and guided me into becoming a strong woman,” recalled Indrani, speaking to G Plus about her childhood.
These circumstances led her to strive towards becoming a successful individual who had the power to influence others at a very young age. Indrani, who started training in Martial Arts in 2015 under coach Angkim Kashyap Sharma, has since the mastered several forms including Kyokushin and MMA. In August 2017, the coach-student duo quit their regular jobs and launched a fitness gym in Guwahati called DASTBI MMA - Kyokushin Karate & Fitness Gym, situated in Narikalbari. A few months later, in April 2018, they opened a second branch at Beltola with the aim to promote genuine MMA and martial arts to the youth and the society and provide a platform to the young talents to showcase their potential and skill set. They currently teach MMA, Kyokushin Karate, KABOSI and Animal Flow, exercises that focus on mobility, flexibility, strength, endurance and strengthen core.
Speaking to G Plus about the journey so far, Indrani said, “In this journey, we witnessed that some people/academies under the banner of MMA would misguide the youth and the common people just to make money. We decided to show them the right path and in a short span of time, our students have participated in many tournaments, championships and other athletic events and earned glory.”
At DASTBI MMA, there’s a special unit named “Divas to Defence” under which the duo trains self-defense and protection to all the women irrespective of their age in a military system named KABOSI (close quarter combat from Australia) for free. Not only do they keep organizing free camps to train women in the art of defense, they’ve also recently organized a championship series under the banner of “Versus Championship” that gained tremendous response from aspiring fighters.
“According to me, the importance of martial arts and fitness should be considered as a basic need of human being. I, being a victim of child abuse, believe that a child should know the difference between good touch and bad touch. So we train the children, their parents, women and other common people to be mentally alert at all times even when the environment and the people are known and close to them,” Indrani expressed.
Indrani opined that the academy has faced many problems while promoting the art of MMA due to the unfortunate scenario prevailing in the region. “There are many organizations that claim to teach MMA but end up providing half-baked teachings to the youth. Additionally, there are many fake platforms where deserving fighters are not acknowledged due to partial judgments and hidden conspiracies. This is not only true for MMA but also present in other sectors of martial arts and combat sports as well,” she said.
Indrani’s motive now is to offer quality platforms to the aspiring fighters and provide the underprivileged youth with a career and earning opportunity through MMA by training them for free or at a negligible fee. She says, “The cuts and the injuries are our tattoos with better stories that we feel proud to show. So I invite all the women to become fighters’ the harder and technically they will train the stronger they will become.”
