Hyderabad, India, May 10, 2026: One is the daughter of a cook at a yacht club; the other’s mother works as a daily wager in a pickle factory: two girls from Telangana - Lahiri Kommaravelly, 15, and Suragani Eswa, 16 - are now bound for the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games this September in the 29ers two-person boat feeder-class youth category.
Lahiri’s mother, Kavitha, struggled to make ends meet during the Covid pandemic in 2020. Her husband, a barber, was unable to earn a living. Her family’s life changed when the Hyderabad Yacht Club hired her as a cook and the club’s president , Suheim Shaikh, offered to train her three daughters in sailing.
Shaikh, a long-time sailing enthusiast, said: “Sailing was an exotic, elite sport and only people with access to this club or others, or Army and Navy, could sail. I went to bureaucrats in Hyderabad and told them that I would throw sailing open to everybody.”
That’s how Project Naavika was launched in 2015. “We only train underprivileged children from shanty towns, orphanages, destitute and abandoned families. We are meeting our goals of pulling hundreds out of poverty,” Shaikh added.
Over the last decade, 27 have found spots in sport companies and units across Navy and Army sailing nodes.
Lahiri’s partner Suragani was studying in a Welfare School in Telangana from where she was scouted out. Her dad, an ambulance driver, had passed away, and her mother worked in a pickle factory.
Only a year into sailing, she was good at keeping the sails flat, not loosening up while trimming, gybing and tacking. “Earlier my mother was scared and didn’t allow me. The first time we capsized, I didn’t know what happened. But I like sailing because I’m getting good at it fast,” Suragani revealed.
Lahiri and Suragani aced the Mumbai trials last December. They will now proudly represent India at the Asian Games.
Source: Indian Express
