“I was always in shorts and T-shirts, used to fly kites and play marbles with the boys in the colony,” she reveals. So when Selma took up a hockey stick, she did not feel that she was doing something different. The girl who scored a dozen of goals in the India’s Asia Cup victory in 1982 in Delhi, thanks the support system she had at home. It was due to their encouragement that she kept proving herself better than the neighbourhood boys by giving them a tough day on the field. Her earliest memories of playing the sport were on the small ground (now the Police Gymkhana) opposite their building.

Those days getting girls to play hockey was always a difficult proposition as Selma admits, “Forget 16 members in a team, we used to struggle to make it 11. During those days we used to go to their houses and wake them for practice”. It was the passion that ran in her blood that made her to go to such extent.

Obvious choice
Selma also decided to study at the Khalsa College, located a little away from her Marine Lines home as she points out, “I was crazy after playing the game and Khalsa was the only college that had a hockey ground. So it was the obvious choice.” Needless to say that most of the time was spent on the ground.
After she was selected in the Indian team, her only hassle on foreign tours was not beating the opposition defenders but wearing a saree off the field.
“Whenever we used to play tournaments outside India, it used to be a pain handling the saree. But over a period of time, I got used to handling the piece of cloth,” states Selma quite frankly.
A crack centre-forward and an equally adept inside-forward, Selma’s career spanned a generation (1972-1996) and it included an international stint of eight years (1975-83), with her being conferred the Padmashree Award in 1991. It was in 1983, at the age of 23, Selma dramatically quit international hockey for reasons best know to her. “I didn’t want to hang on there, giving a chance to people to talk about when I would retire. So I took a quick decision,” she explains with an encouraging smile.
But the desire to play the game was still alive as she says, “I didn’t totally stop playing hockey, as I continued turning out for Western Railway till 1996 and was satisfied that I remained connected with my passion.”

More equal now
Over the years Selma feels that there have been changes in women’s hockey as she goes back in time and says, “During my days, we never got equal treatment with the men’s team. We hardly went on tours, maybe once in two years. But I’m glad things are changing and now the women’s teams are travelling abroad at least four times a year to get adequate exposure.”
Quiz her about the reason why girls talking up hockey in city has been dropping drastically and pat come the reply, “I’ve been saying this time and again that turning the game professional is the key. Children torn between academics and sports cannot do well in both. With professionalism, security creeps in and that will give parents the confidence to support their children’s dream of playing hockey.”