Samruddhi sandip ghorpade

Khelo India University Games: For someone who is all of 23 years old and has accomplished so much, that’s very unusual, and to some it may border on the unsettling. Still, for Indian wrestler Nishu, it's all about an unseen calmness about her.

At an age in which people laugh a lot and carry a carefree attitude towards life, she barely speaks, mostly a picture of serenity, even during her three bouts across two days that saw her win her first gold medal of Khelo India University Games (KIUG) in the 53kg category at the Lohagarh Stadium in the eastern city of Rajasthan on Thursday.

But once you speak to her, get to know her better, you kind of know that it is grief that has very likely shaped her personality. She lost an older brother (by one and a half years) to a brain tumour. While it happened quite a few years back when she was a little kid, such episodes in life often leave a pall of sobriety on the survivors forever.