20/04/2023
Positive attitude + Physiotherapy + Perseverance with persistence = Possible
“I was on my way to work on a two-wheeler one day when a truck rammed into me and completely crushed my leg. It wasn’t the driver’s fault - there was a pillar that hindered his vision. People immediately took me to the hospital, and even though it happened around 9:30 am, I was only operated upon at 5:30 pm. The doctors tried to save my leg, but after a few days, it got infected, and I had to be amputated. When the doctor told me, I asked him, ‘Why did you take so long? I knew for a while that this would happen.’
What got me through this whole ordeal is acceptance - that this is my fate, now I can either choose to cry about it or take it with a pinch of salt and push myself…I picked the latter. In fact, when people used to visit me in the hospital and get emotional — I would tell them jokes to make them laugh!
So I took physiotherapy and began to learn how to walk all over again. My biggest fear was that I couldn’t play badminton, which has been my passion since childhood — but somehow, even while I was facing difficulty in walking…I could play.
I began winning corporate badminton tournaments and decided to try out at a National Level at the suggestion of one of my amputee friends. I went on to win several medals at the National level, and this year, I won Silver in the Para-Badminton World Championship held in England.
I’ve trained for 5 hours a day whilst juggling my job as a software engineer, almost completed my Scuba Diving training, and traveled almost all over India. When people ask me, ‘How do you do so much?’ I just ask one question — ‘What’s stopping you?’"
