A national level Kho-Kho player, Shivam Gupta, from the state of Uttar Pradesh has been forced to sell vegetables on the street to feed his family. Shivam started representing Uttar Pradesh in 2013 during a sub-junior in Allahabad. He soon went up the ladder and represented the state in Senior National Championship during 2017 and 2018 in Bijnor and was also awarded as best player in a tournament held at Allahabad in 2019.
Shivam’s struggle started after the nationwide lockdown was imposed in a bid to fight the deadly coronavirus. Shivam’s father Ram Kishore Gupta had a small hotel on a sidewalk near his house in Rambagh, which had to be shut during the lockdown. During the early days, the District Kho-Kho association provided Gupta family with the necessary ration items but it was soon stopped.
This forced Shivam and his brother Ankush to start selling vegetables in a cart, street by street. There has been no help whatsoever for the family and the brothers continue to sell vegetables to make ends meet.