A Promise from Paris

IT WAS THE morning of August 25 and I had just got up at 6 AM Paris time. Having reached late the previous night, I was slightly jetlagged. Maybe that was why I had missed the phone calls. Seeing the two missed calls from Devendra Jhajharia, president of the Paralympic Committee of India, I promptly returned the call. Devendra was at the airport waiting to board for Paris.

“I read that you are already there and will be covering the Paralympics with equal passion. I can assure you that we will not disappoint you. Mark my words. India will win 25 medals and more. This will be our best Games ever,” said Jhajharia. Devendra is a person I have the highest regard for. As an athlete, he was unrivalled. And now as president he is carrying forward the same legacy.

Devendra lost an arm at the age of eight when he accidentally touched an electric cable while climbing a tree. “The shock was more mental than anything else. When I came back home from the hospital, I was depressed. For the first month I refused to leave my house.”

It was a sense of inferiority and peer pressure that had started to weigh on the mind of young Devendra. It was only when his mother motivated him to go out and play with the neighbourhood kids that he finally started stepping out to socialise. His mother was clear: Devendra was a victim of circumstances and was in no way inferior to anyone else. She inspired him to do everything that he did earlier. He still remains indebted to her for the early confidence she was able to instil in a confused and scared eight-year-old.

The turnaround for Devendra happened when he was in Class 10. The occasion was the annual school athletic meet. Javelin was one of the events. A young Devendra, always keen to play sport, was eager to try his hand at the javelin. But he faced serious rejection at school. As he put it, “Sabne hume manaa kar diya. Kehne lage mein kya kar raha hoon wahan pe. Javelin mere se nahi hone wala hai or mujhe yeh sab nahi karna chahiye. Mera ek haath nahi hain, maine aise kaise thaan liya ki main javelin phekunga. Bhagwan ki daya se main par raha tha yahi bahut tha. (Everyone said no. They asked what I was doing there. They said I could not do javelin and that I should leave this stuff. I did not have one hand, so how could I think of throwing a javelin, they asked. They said by God’s grace it was enough that I could still study.)”

Even the teachers refused to come out in support of Devendra. In fact, they asked him to leave the field and cheer from the sidelines. They feared he might end up injuring himself and were unwilling to take the risk. “Maine bhi thaan li thi. Main javelin khelna chahta tha or main khel ke rahunga (I was also determined that I would throw a javelin and that I would do it),” he says.

He went home and the first thing he did was convert a piece of wood into a makeshift javelin. That was his first real equipment, which he used for practise for the next few weeks. Soon after school got over in the afternoon, Devendra would start to run back home to be in time for practise before it got dark. Little did he know that the 5km he was running each day was working perfectly as his endurance training. “Mujhe yeh sab nahi pata tha. Main jaldi se jaldi ghar pahuchna chahta tha kyon ki ghar mein bag rakh ke main ground mein practice karne jata tha. Agar mein thoda tez bhag saka toh mein aur thodi der practice kar sakta tha (I didn’t know all this. I wanted to reach home early so I could drop my bag and go to the ground to practise. If I ran fast I could practise a little more),” he remembers.

When it was time for the inter-district championship, Devendra was ready to shock everyone with his skills in the javelin throw event. When he won a medal at the meet, things started to change at his school as well. “Yeh competition main aap se keh sakta hoon mere liye Olympics ke samaan tha. Yeh mera atma-samman ke liye mujhe jeetna tha. Mein able bodied athletes ke saath khel raha tha aur sabke samne kar dikhane ka yeh mauka mujhe dobara nahi milta (This competition, for me, was like the Olympics. I had to win this for my self-respect. I was competing with able-bodied athletes and would not get another such opportunity to showcase what I could do in front of everyone like this),” says Devendra.

Winning a medal at the inter-district champi­onship transformed his athletics career forever. This competition had given him the necessary confidence to train harder. That was when he started to think of an athletic career and making a name by competing for India. He was also included in his school team thereafter and accorded respect as an athlete. By the time he entered college, javelin had become his first love.

The next major athletic meet was in Jamshedpur and that was where the next chapter of this story was written. Devendra, who was being trained by RD Singh at the time, had gone to Jamshedpur as a promising athlete confident of winning a medal. Singh, who had seen him train and improve, mentioned him to one of the coaches present only to be ticked off for backing some­one “jiska ek haath nahi hai (who does not have one hand)”.

In the words of Devendra, “Main Coach Sir ke saath khada tha jab unhone ek dusre coach se kaha ki ispe nazar rakhna. Ye bahut achha athlete ban sakta hai. Unhone mere taraf dekha aur haske mere coach se kaha ki Sir aap bhi na. Yeh kaise khel sakta hai. Ise government job mil jayega aur wahi bahut badi baat hoga. (I was standing with Coach Sir when he told another coach to keep an eye on me and that I could be a big athlete. He looked at me, laughed and told off my coach. He questioned how I could play. He said I could get a government job and that would be a big achievement).”

Little did the man realise that he had further tickled Devendra’s ego. Yet again, the javelin would do the talking. “I told my coach I was used to such comments and it just did not bother me. By talking one gained nothing. Talk is cheap and real talk for me happened on the field,” he says. True to his words, Devendra yet again won the gold in the event and the coach who had ticked him off was forced to apologise and acknowledge his mistake. “Yeh competition jeetne ke baad maine socha ki main India ke liye jarur khel sakta hoon (I thought I could definitely play for India after winning this competition),” he says.

It is this resilience that he has tried to impart to his athletes here in Paris. Be it Sumit Antil, whom I expect a gold medal from on September 2 or Sachin Khilari and Yogesh Kathuniya, Indian stars are expected to win at least eight-nine medals here in Paris in athletics alone. And then there is para-badminton. Speak to head coach Gaurav Khanna and you know that six-seven medals are a real certainty. “We have won nearly 1,000 medals in international com­petitions in the last few years. Every compe­tition we have participated in, our athletes have won medals. Paris will be no different. We are expecting at least seven-eight medals from Paris, if not more,” says Khanna whose academy has produced a number of India’s para-badminton stars. Speak to Manasi Joshi and this belief is reinforced. “We are ready. We have done extremely well in every competition we have played in. Paris should be no different. Many more will be watching what we do in Paris and in that sense this is a huge opportunity,” says Manasi.

While we mention athletics and badminton, we should not forget shoot­ing and archery. Avani Lekhara, Tokyo Paralympic gold medallist, will lead the charge in shooting and Sheetal Devi will once again be the cynosure of attention in archery. Lekhara, coached by Suma Shirur, is one of the most composed athletes you will see. Training to be a lawyer, she reached Paris on August 24 and will be participating in three events. “She is a very good shooter. The best thing about her is her temperament,” says Shirur.

And in Sheetal Devi India has one of the most awe-inspiring athletes of the Games. Many in Paris want to watch the 17-year-old Sheetal in action and she is already a star attraction of these Games, something that does not faze her.

In every sense, this is expected to be India’s games. As Devendra says, “Just back us. We will not disappoint you. The Paralympic movement in India needs support. We need people to see our athletes and celebrate them. The medals will come and it will tell you how much we have progressed.”

About The Author

Boria Majumdar

•