New Delhi: As the lamps of Diwali flicker across India this year, from the tribal heartlands of Odisha to the sandy villages of Rajasthan and the chawls of Pune, some families are celebrating a new kind of Lakshmi Puja, one not marked by gold coins or rituals, but by pride and tears of joy.

Their daughters, once told that sports were no place for women, have become symbols of fortune and empowerment through the game of kho kho.

These young women – Magai Majhi from Odisha, Nirmala Bhati from Rajasthan, Priyanka Ingle from Maharashtra, and Ranjana Sarania from Assam, have rewritten what it means to bring prosperity home.

They are the faces of India’s rise in traditional sports, and in their parents’ eyes, they are the true goddesses of wealth, not for what they earn, but for what they’ve

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