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