Shooting for the stars

Aligarh girl Areeba Khan aims a shot at history and the Olympic berth.

Syed Asim Ali

The sunshine has disappeared and the leaves have fallen off the trees. It’s a foggy, chilly and downright cold afternoon— a quintessential time of the year to sit by the fire, flip pages of a paperback picked up from a local thrift store and gorge on some piping hot delicacies. But, Areeba Khan shoulders her shotgun, puts on a pair of red contoured safety goggles, dumps a few boxes of shells into her pockets and heads out to the skeet field of shattered clay at the Qasimpur Shooting Range in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. She keeps the firearm pointed in a safe direction, establishes the sight alignment, squeezes the trigger and immediately stops shooting when her coach and uncle, Mairaj Ahmad Khan shouts, ‘cease firing’.

“It’s a training day for me and the cold weather cannot bring it to a halt,” says the 20-yearold undergraduate student of the prestigious Aligarh Muslim University, eyeing a 2024 Paris Olympics berth as she follows through her shots.

After firing the round, she does not immediately re-holster the weapon or move to acquire a new target, but instead stays focused on the shot object.

“This prevents you from accidentally sending a round,” she mumbles with eyes still fixed on the target.

Areeba allows us to capture her images, but insists that she will be more comfortable speaking at her residence after the training. “Talking right now might lead to a sloppy training session; we can carry on the conversation at my place over a cup of tea”, she says with a grin.

Her coach again gives the signal and after a delay, two saucer-sized discs flash through the air. Areeba shoots both faultlessly.

After five hours of careful and meticulous firing of gun shots, Areeba rests the stock of the gun against her back. Her coach sets up behind her, holding the remote to the skeet thrower. They have been doing this since she was 11-years old.

She’s grown older to become one of the most decorated sport shooters in the country. Areeba is India’s number two ranked shooter. She reached the crest of the hill in the women’s category as number one in 2019 but missed the Tokyo Olympics by a small margin.

“I am working hard and keeping hopes alive to represent India in the 2024 Olympics, I don’t want to look back and lament on the missed opportunity for Tokyo”, points out a nonchalant Areeba.

Later in the day, sipping ginger tea from a ceramic glass tumbler at her Azad Nagar residence in the Dodhpur locality of Aligarh, she says, “The shooting sport is all about mental toughness. One has to remain calm to bounce back from obstacles. To improve focus and block out distractions, it is imperative that I don’t remember what all I have missed but instead keep the future events as my centre of attention”.

Just after Areeba mentions that to keep all pressure at bay, she attends online sports counselling sessions for wellbeing, mental functioning and physical performance in sports; her father Khalid Khan, also a national-level shooter gestures a pleased look but warns there is more her daughter needs to do to make it to Paris in 2024.

“It’s a perfect game to reach the Olympics. This is a lot harder. You can keep shooting perfectly until your gun needs to cool and then miss a target, which becomes the deciding factor for your chances to represent the Country at mega events”, Khalid stresses.

He adds: For a shooter, the gun is like a part of the body and successful hitting of targets should come naturally.

Areeba smiles open-mouth at her father sitting next to her on the couch and says, “I am doing the best I can, aren’t you proud”.

The doting father, Khalid takes a deep audible breath, sounding like sighing and tells his daughter, “I am just making you more disciplined for stellar future achievements in the sport. I have a great passion and zeal to see you representing the Country at levels where I couldn’t reach”.

Areeba tells us that at times she feels like her father has devoted his entire being to see her champion at the highest levels.

“But expectations bring pressure and athletes end up taking extreme steps and I always want to be in the right state of mind,” she emphasises while pointing out that some of the best shooters such as Konica Layak, Namanveer Singh Brar, Hunardeep Singh Sohal and Khushseerat Kaur Sandhu ended their lives for failing to fulfil of what was expected of them.

Areeba says that she does not want the feeling of failure to settle into the bleak thoughts of shooters and other young sportspersons.

“I understand that everyone hates f