Laishram Sarita Devi looks winded. She sits in a corner of the boxing ring at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in Delhi and drinks in big gulps of air. She has been sparring for roughly ten minutes, alternating two minute bouts with one minute of rest. The sweat streams off her face as she jumps up and prepares to do battle again.

Outside the ring roughly 40 other girls were shadow boxing but Sarita is one of three women - Mary Kom and Pooja Rani are the others - who will be competing in the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea. That’s why she is in the ring. With the tournament a week away, she needs to hone her ring craft until she is a tightly controlled spring, full of tensile strength and kinetic energy.

After she is done sparring, a coach gets in the ring with Sarita wearing punching pads. They work on combinations for a while but it is clear Sarita is tiring. Her punches still come in a flurry, but the thump they make no longer echoes around the room. She stops and the physiotherapist then spends several minutes carefully stretching her out in the corner of the ring. One leg is pushed back over her head as she lies on her back, then the other. Her shoulders are rubbed, then her neck.

The 29-year-old Sarita has spent most of her career fighting at 52 kg, but has also fought at 60 kg, 57 kg and 51 kg in the past. She won a world title at 52 kg in 2006 and also boasts of five Asian Boxing Championships and a World Championship bronze. In South Korea, she will be boxing at 60 kilos, the highest weight at which she has fought professionally.

The Asian Games has only three weight categories and so Sarita has had to move up to 60 kg from 52 kg to allow Kom to fight at 51 kg (Kom has spent most of her career boxing at 46 kg).

While Sarita is no stranger to putting on or losing weight, this time the challenge was exponentially harder. She is coming off a two-year break during which she gave birth to a son.

“I had cesarean surgery and recovering from that is very tough,” she told Firstpost after changing out of her boxing gear and into a t-shirt and shorts. “My weight went up to 85 kilos and to bring it down to 60 required a lot of work and was a big challenge.”

A closer look at Sarita's physique reveals toned arms with clearly defined biceps and legs that are lean and springy but there is still a small bulge around her waist.

“Sarita’s fitness is not what it could be”, admits head women’s coach Anoop Kumar. But he believes she has the experience to compensate for what she lacks in fitness.

That belief is backed up by the silver Sarita won at the Commonwealth Games earlier this year. It was her first competitive tournament in two years and came following the ban on India’s boxing federation.

“We didn’t receive much support during the ban and I got quite demoralised. It was a very tough time. I was not fully confident after the baby. I wondered how would I perform?

“It felt very good to come back after a two-year break and reach the finals,” she says with a shy smile.

Sarita believed she would have won the final too had the team had its own physiotherapist.

“After delivery, your body changes and it is very important for us to have a physio with the team. I had to do the recovery myself but you can’t do it properly that way.”

Sarita draws inspiration from Kom, with whom she shares both a state and a birthday. Kom won a world championship and an Olympic bronze after giving birth to twins and is now targeting an Asian Games gold medal following the birth of her third child. With quiet confidence, Sarita says she wants to help prove that becoming a mother doesn’t mean giving up your career.

“If you want to do something after having a baby, there is nothing to stop you. My aim is to win the gold. That is why I am sweating it out so much in training.

“Mary is playing Asian Games after three babies so the young girls should be getting a lot of motivation from watching us.”

There are other, bigger, dreams that are also driving her to keep boxing.

“I have never played in the Olympic Games and that remains my aim. At the Commonwealth Games I won a medal. Then if I get one in the Asian Games, only the Olympics is left to complete my collection.”