Legally, Anahat Singh became an adult this year. Professionally, she’s been living like one for years. “Playing for India means everything to me,” says the 18-year-old, fresh off the biggest win of her young career—the World Junior Squash Championship title, the first Indian to win it. Also the first non-Egyptian to do so in 16 years.
When she was starting out, Singh intended to follow in badminton superstar PV Sindhu’s footsteps. But her elder sister, Amira, had already enrolled for squash lessons, and it only made practical sense for the parents to take both their daughters to the same classes. That payoff has now produced India’s next Olympic hopeful.
Singh has already represented India at the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games, and toggled between junior and senior professional squash circuits. Yet, days after her biggest win thus far, the version of her that you get is reassuringly ordinary. “I’m mostly sleeping in,” she says, on a day packed with media commitments. It’s a short stay at home in Delhi before hitting the courts again. Her plans? Meet friends, eat Chinese food, wander around malls and test out her newly acquired driving skills. “My passengers have given me a decent rating so far,” she tells me. “But driving in Delhi can be a lot.”
Somewhere between the athlete carrying India’s Olympic hopes and the teenager worrying about manoeuvring Delhi roads is the real Anahat Singh. “I am very different off court,” she says. “I’m a normal teen, and I need to be like that. I play my best squash when my mind is free. And for that I live a very normal life off the court. It balances things out.”
That determination to remain more than just a squash player shows up in the little things. She laughs about spending far too much time on her phone. She admits to eating more junk food than she probably should. After planning elaborate victory celebrations before previous editions of the World Junior Squash Championships, only to lose each time, Singh deliberately made no plans at all this year. “I just didn’t want to jinx it,” she grins. “I wanted to go with the flow.”
You can’t blame her. This was her fifth and final crack at the World Juniors, a tournament she half-jokingly refers to as a “curse” after years of quarter-final exits and near misses. Victory had relentlessly evaded her. “It’s been rough, this one,” she confesses. “Maybe that’s why I’m still processing it. I think it’ll only fully sink in when I play my next tournament.”