India has now won 2 individual medals at the Olympics, and both of them have been won by women. On one hand, Mirabai Chanu was relatively unknown to the Indian population, while PV Sindhu has been the poster child of Indian badminton along with Saina Nehwal for quite a few years now.
Mirabai, who hails from the North-Eastern state of Manipur, won the silver medal in the 49 kg weightlifting category. She became the 2nd Indian woman to win a medal in weightlifting after Karnam Malleshwari’s bronze medal almost 2 decades ago in the Sydney Olympics.
PV Sindhu from the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh (now Telangana), has been in the limelight ever since she won the silver medal at the last Olympics. She also had an ongoing professional rivalry with Carolina Marin which garnered a fair bit of attention. By winning the bronze this year she has now become the first Indian to win consecutive medals at the Olympics.
Our sources say that all major production houses in Bollywood including Dharma Productions, Yash Raj Films, Balaji Telefilms, UTV, Eros and Anurag Kashyap films are scrambling to get the rights to make the biopics of these athletes. Our sources also tell us that Dharma Productions is close to signing the deal with both and that Ananya Pandey is the first choice to play Mirabai Chanu. They are still on the lookout for a dusky actress to play PV Sindhu as Radhika Apte declined the offer.
This episode is also available as a blog post: http://thedailyvanilla.com/2021/08/02/bollywood-scrambling-for-biopic-rights-of-pv-sindhu-and-mirabai-chanu/