Meet Hema Deora

Hema Deora is a familiar face to all of us. Apart from having won a bronze medal in the mixed teams in the Asian Games held in Jakarta, 2018, she has won several open titles over the last years and narrowly missed winning several more.

She has recently been writing about her work during Covid times, something which is all the more touching because she has been freely giving of her time to a few poor children, into whose lives she has been pouring joy along with some basic education.

We hope to provide our readers a few more insights into this sweet patron of bridge.

Hema the Individual

Born in a traditional Maharashtrian family, her father never allowed any card games to be played in the house. "The one sport I played growing up was badminton", she told us. She went on to study architecture and interior design. She exports designed furniture to Paris and New York.

Murli Deora, who had picked up the game during his college days, used to spend hours on weekends playing it with friends. “He was a Marvadi and most of them play bridge,” said Hema Deora, laughing. “He used to be so engrossed in it. I used to make him and his friends such nice tea and they would never even acknowledge. I remember one day I asked him if he enjoyed the quiche I made. He said, ‘I don’t remember.’ I said, ‘This is a bit too much.’ What is so fascinating about this game that they totally forget everything else?”

I remember when I would watch my husband play the card game with his colleagues and I would ask them to involve me in the contest, they would say 'no no, this is not for you'.

"Later, when both my sons went abroad for higher studies and I had fewer responsibilities, I began to take bridge lessons. They soon realized I had taken up the game quite well. So they would ask me to play with them and I could not because their game was different (primarily rubber bridge oriented), mine was of professional level," Hema recalls fondly.

Hema, the Bridge Player

It was only after she got married that she was introduced to bridge. Hema actually started learning from identifying the suits. Her first (and only) guru was the great JM Shah. While she was initially not very interested, JM Shah persisted with her. Even thereafter, there used to be a lot of breaks as she was focused on her family.

JM Shah suggested she pick up a partner and he would coach both, her personally as well as the partnership. Taking up this suggestion, she partnered with Premila Shivdasani. Within less than two years, Hema participated in a national selection trial and won it, which gave her the chance to represent India for the first time, for a tournament in Sri Lanka. They won the BFAME event there and went on to play in the Venice Cup thereafter. She has since represented India in places such as Shanghai, Karachi, Monte Carlo, Tokyo and Jordan.

In the meanwhile, she also started accumulating laurels in the Open Field. Her team, Empty Vessel, won the Bhartia event in 2008-09. Hema warmly recalls it as a day that made her husband proud. "I had won a tournament in Delhi and they had invited Deoraji as the chief guest. He was the one who awarded the team our trophy. It was one of the proudest moments of my life"

While the medal at the Asian Games was clearly the pinnacle of her career, it was also humbling in another way. "I got to interact with so many Indian athletes who had no access to nutrition their physical sport demanded. It was so good to stand as one with them as a fellow medal winner for the country."

 

She has had extremely good performances in other major events like Indore as well as HCL. Her teams have always had interesting names rather than a single one identifying. A couple of names in the recent past have been “Speedy Turtles”, “Savage and Average”.

We asked her why she chose such amusing names rather than a single name by which her team could be identified. She responded that she did not play regularly enough to field a regular team. This was because she found the need to work with the foundations started along with her husband more compelling than the need to play every tournament.

Asked to recount one of the most memorable moments in her career, she says, “Once when we went to Montreal for a tournament, my partner and I were pitted against two men who seemed quite familiar,” says Hema. “We then realised that it was the pair of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. They were rank amateurs then and we beat them quite easily but it was quite a fun experience to beat two of the most powerful men in the world,” she adds. "At a later point in time, I presented a compilation of my bridge columns in JetWings and Mid Day to him".

 

Hema, the Philanthrope

If you ask her, she doesn't regard herself as such. Our family has always been doing a lot of work helping the poorer sections of society. For us, it has been more a way of life rather anything else.

We have all recently read about her work with some tiny kids in the slums of Mumbai. She also closely works with the foundations instituted by the family for educating children - Sparsh and Karma. "I’d like to help facilitate education across municipal schools even though it is something basic like distributing books. It is elementary, but very important to them."

Another pet project of hers is the Shri Murli Deora Eye Hospital. This is situated among one of the poorest sections of Mumbai and does a lot of work providing free eye camps for the poor and performing cataract operations and consultative clinics free of cost. “We hold camps every year on my husband’s birthday (10^th January)”.

Hema, the Bridge Patron

Hema has done a lot of work in the past to promote the cause of bridge. Last year, she commenced the Shri Murli Deora Memorial Championship to commemorate her husband's birth anniversary. This year it has been incorporated as a part of the BFI's Winter National Championship in the form of a trophy for the IMP Pairs event.

She has also sponsored the first prize for the BCBA Annual Pairs Championship conducted in 2021.

She has always been fond of the BridgeFromHome team(this paragraph is being inserted at her insistence). She has been a regular supporter of the JM Shah Memorial Bridge Tournament which has been conducted ever since his death in 2019. Hemaji very warmly expressed “ Sukrit, you, Stanley, all the Directors and the entire team with your hard work and hard efforts put in has given the Old, the Young and the lonely ones an amazing, serious and joyful time during this horrific pandemic time. Many thanks and Kudos to you all.”

In Summation

To sum up, there are many facets to Hema's personality of which, according to her, bridge is just one. But she regards herself mainly as a family person, working first to develop her children and help her husband with his work and only then looking at other things. She believes that she has been fortunate to find herself in a position where she can help a lot of people in many different ways and hopes to go on doing her best to spread joy in the world.

Hemaji, we salute you for all the great work done by you in the past and wish you all the best with your activities in the future.