Guwahati: If you are a movie buff from the late 90s and the early 2000s, you will remember Preeti Jhangiani from the Bollywood multistarrer Mohabbatein. Dressed in a white salwar suit, she played the role of an enigmatic Kiran playing the love interest of Jimmy Shergil, and later, thousands of youngsters across the nation.
Another hint: if you are a fan of the melodious numbers from the late 1990s, you must have seen her in the 1997 video song – Chhuimui Si Tum Lagti Ho from the album Yeh Hai Prem.
It has been more than two decades since Mohabbatein, also starring the likes of megastars Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, hit the silver screens and Kiran left an indelible mark with her enchanting smile, but as time passed by, the then 19-year-old Preeti gradually faded out of the limelight.
Twenty-three years later, Preeti is ready to dazzle once again in a whole new avatar, and in a field which by her own admission, she wasn’t very enthusiastic about during her school days. But as she would say in the course of the interview, “In life, never say never,” the 42-year-old has emerged as the most prominent face promoting arm-wrestling in India.
Backed by her actor husband Parvin Dabas, the couple launched the Pro Panja League (PPL) in 2020 and is gearing up for the first-ever televised version of the championship from July 28.
In a freewheeling chat with EastMojo, Preeti highlighted the sport’s connection with the northeast in general. Assam in particular boasts some of the biggest arm-wrestling stars: Chetna Sharma, Tridip Medhi and Irfan Hussain.
Preeti, who was recently elected the president of the People’s Arm-wrestling Federation of India (PAFI), also revealed that a trip to Guwahati is on her itinerary as she plans to hold an arm-wrestling fest later this month.
“The sport is hugely popular in the northeast in general and especially in Assam, we have some really strong players capable of winning at the international level. We have Chetna Sharma, who is immensely popular in Assam,” Preeti said while describing an instance where the Assamese arm-wrestler had defeated a few well-built male counterparts.
“Sometime back, we had done a tournament with her (in Mumbai), where we had asked some strongly-built guys at IIT Mumbai: if any of them beat Chetna, we would pay Rs 10,000. Not one of them was able to put her hand down. She beat four or five of these big guys who had already beaten the competitors of their respective categories,” she elaborated with a sense of pride.
“Then we have Tridip Medhi, who is a gold medallist; Irfan Hussain just won a bronze at the Asian arm-wrestling championships; Jagadish Baruah, Siddhartha Malakar, we have some really big stars from Assam,” she added.
Arm-wrestling in other northeast states
Preeti said the sport is already recognised in Arunachal Pradesh and is gaining momentum across other neighbouring states. “Arm-wrestling is…very popular and strong in Meghalaya and Mizoram as well. It’s also seeing a resurgence in Manipur, Tripura and Sikkim. In Arunachal, the sport enjoys government recognition and support as well,” she said.
“In fact, we are planning a big tournament in Guwahati, which is called the Pro North East Sports, like an arm-wrestling festival. We are planning it on May 22, and hoping for a huge turnout in Guwahati. It’s still in the pipeline as of now. But I can say that we have some serious plans for the North East,” she added.
Federation with a difference
Taking a dig at federations where athletes are treated as second-class citizens, Preeti, the president of the Maharashtra Arm-wrestling Association, said she believes in promoting the athletes and making them the representatives.
“The whole idea of having our own federation where our athletes are affiliated is to make the athlete the star. Now what happens in general in federations is that the officials are the face. In any (arm-wrestling) poster you have photos of the president, general secretary and treasurer. But where are the athletes in the posters?”
“How is the sport going to progress if the audience doesn’t know the athletes? What’s happening here and all the other federations is that officials are just making money and working for themselves rather than working for the sport,” Preeti said.
“A federation is a non-commercial organisation. It’s not a money-making kind of thing that you should get into, it should not be for the money but for the sport. That is the meaning of a national federation, but unfortunately, this has been distorted. And so far, the federation was just making money off the athletes by charging them double for every national and international tournament they were going to,” she went on to explain.
The Bollywood actor asserted that it is her (PAFI) team’s dedication towards those goals that has prompted the Asian Arm-wrestling Federation (AAF), as well as the World Arm-wrestling Federation (WAF) to recognise their effort even as she expressed her hopes to host the Asian championship in India in the near future.
“The people at AAF Jeenbek Mukambetov (president), as well the WAF saw that these people are actually working towards the development of the sport in the country and there’s such a boom that everybody wants to come down here. So it’s not far that the Asian Arm-wrestling Championships will come to India soon, and I think that’s a big thing for us. We have a huge number of athletes in the country,” she said.
National Championships
Dropping hints at the PAFI getting closer to receiving due recognition from the union sports ministry, Preeti said that the first step in that direction will be by conducting the first-ever national arm-wrestling championships, slated to be held in Mathura from June 1-4.
“Now the next step is to get our national federation recognised by the government, it’s already in quite a lot of states, and now the next step is to get the national federation organized, and the first step towards that is we are conducting the first national tournament for arm-wrestling from June 1-4 in Mathura. We hope to see huge participation from the northeast and Assam in particular,” she said.
Pro Panja League and the format:
Gearing up for the Pro Panja League, which will be telecasted for the first time, Preeti expects it to be a massive hit, considering the massive support the sport generated on social media.
Elaborating on the league’s format, Preeti said it’s the only competition where the specially-abled players will be in action simultaneously with the able-bodied players and will carry equal prize money.
“This will be like any other league, with six teams competing. There will be 10 weight categories, 6 in men, 3 in women, and 1 for the specially-abled. We will be the only league which has men, women and specially-abled participants getting equal prize money and equal opportunities. It’s a 17-day league starting from July 28 to August 13,” she said.
She also hoped that the tournament will be in a caravan format from the next season.
“This time we are having the entire league in Delhi, but we are planning a caravan format from next season,” she added.
Transition to sports from films
So has Preeti distanced herself from the world of showbiz? When did the transition start?
“In life, never say never. I had said when I was acting that I would never be a producer, and eventually, I ended up producing a film (laughs).”
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“We are also producing a couple of other movies as well. Sports was not something in which I was very much interested. Of course, like everyone else, I played sports in school. I used to watch some cricket and tennis but it was not something I would ever get into professionally. Once we got into the promotion of sport, arm-wrestling was the one thing that stood out to us because I feel it has huge potential in it. It’s an easy-to-understand sport, we have all done it in our childhood,” she said.
“I’m very much working in films as well, I have a film coming up ‘Mahapaur’, based on UP politics. I’ve also just finished another movie as well as a show called ‘Kafas’ alongside Mona Singh and Sharman Joshi. And yeah, I’m currently shooting for another show which I’m not allowed to name. There is a lot of stuff going on, actually. But the main focus is now on ‘Panja’,” she said before signing off.
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