This 22-year-old is planning a tour that will take her across Goa and Kovalam before it ends in our city
Atita Verghese
It was in June, earlier this year, that roughly 150 skateboarders converged at MG Road for the Go Skateboarding Day. Leading the charge was the confident and striking 22-year old Atita Verghese, who is widely known as the female face of skateboarding in India. A Bengaluru girl, Verghese is gearing up for a tour that begins in Goa, heads to Kovalam and culminates in Bengaluru this month, to promote the sport. Originally a surfboarder, the peppy and cheerful youngster found herself leaning towards skateboarding on her return from a prolonged stay in Goa, where she learned from one of India’s best surfers, Velu.
“I was itching to catch some waves when I moved back to Bengaluru from Goa. That’s when the city’s first and only skate park was being built. So I gave skateboarding a shot. The two sports are so similar that I stuck to the latter, though surfing is something I keep returning to,” she tells us.
A product of Frank Anthony Public School and Christ Junior College, the talented girl dropped out of school after her second PUC to make money to pay for her own education. “I decided to take a break for a year and earn some money for my tuition fees. That’s when I found skateboarding and haven’t gotten around to going to back to college yet,” she says. Outgoing, friendly, and “the extreme opposite of shy and quiet” by her own admission, this young girl’s other interests include art, music and swimming. “I love the idea of community and coming together as a community for a common cause. That’s why working with people in small hamlets across the country interests me so much,” she shares.
Based in HSR Layout in Bengaluru, Verghese’s mother runs a homestay in Koramangala and her sister is training to be a motion designer. “We lost our father when I was eight years old and it’s only been the three of us since. My family is very proud of what I’m doing and is very supportive,” says Verghese, who has travelled the world and the country building skate parks, working with underprivileged kids and generally spreading the love for skateboarding. Her fondest memories are of the bus tour she did in 2013 that travelled from Germany to Belgium to Denmark. “We were a big group of skateboarders on a bus and we would stop off at places and help rebuild and repair skate parks. In India too, I helped build parks in Kovalam, Hampi, Goa and Janwaar in Madhya Pradesh,” she reveals.
While she keeps herself busy with her innumerable interests, Verghese tells us that taking time out, just for herself is very important to her. “Because that’s when you learn a lot about yourself,” explains the lady, who is inspired by common everyday folk, “Like Velu, who comes from a small fishing village in Tamil Nadu and has taken the Indian surfboarding community by storm, or my friend Abhishek, who started the skateboarding community in India,” she says.
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( Source : deccan chronicle )
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