India's women rugby players scrummage for a better future

SARASWATIPUR, India -- "If it were not for rugby," says Sandhya Rai, her eyes gazing at laborers toiling in the blazing sun. "I would have been plucking tea ... maybe also married, with kids."

Rai, 23, the current vice-captain of India's national women rugby team, is talking to a group of students from Kolkata's Future Hope School for underprivileged children. She interns as a physical education teacher at the school and has accompanied the children on an excursion to Saraswatipur Tea Estate at the base of the Himalayas, more than 600 kilometers north of Kolkata.