Para Athletes Want Support, Not Sympathy

There is a study on the lives of people who have lost a leg on the National Library of Medicine website. Among the points the project makes is how important being active and independent is for the dignity of persons with disability.

One of the respondents in the survey narrated their experience.

“I was buying some toothpaste which was placed fairly high up, so I just got up [from my wheel chair] and people were staring …. And the credit card terminal, it was placed so high that I couldn't reach it. So I just got up, and I kept my balance. I could sense people thinking …. ‘Gosh … can a handicapped person really do more than just sit in a wheelchair’?

Dignity is what Indian Para athletes seek as well, along with patience and support. What they don’t want is sympathy.

Manasi Joshi, 2019 Para badminton World Championship winner (SL3 category for standing/ lower limb severe impairment), was a 22-year-old on her way to office in Mumbai on her two-wheeler in 2011. She met with an accident and lost her left leg. She has told that story many times. Now, over a decade later, and with a busy schedule ahead as she attempts to qualify for the 2024 Paralympics, she wants to be seen as just another person. In fact, Joshi often asks media to use pictures where her prosthetic leg does not show.

“Who wants sympathy?,” Joshi says. “My disability is a constant reminder of what has happened to me in the past, and it will be there till I die. But I don't want people to define me by that. I'm much more than that.”

Deepthi Bopaiah, CEO, Go Sports Foundation, which has been working with Indian athletes since 2008, says, “That has been my takeaway from working with Para athletes. They want to be treated the same as an able-bodied person. Attention and care are good, but they don’t like to be mollycoddled, or treated differently.”

Para athletes understand that people mean well when they express their sympathies. It’s just that they sometimes don’t quite know what to say when they encounter a person with disability.

“Even I didn’t know how to interact with disabled people before [her accident],” says Joshi. “So that sensitization has to happen, that we are all are equal. We need support, not sympathy.”

Para-friendly infrastructure, patience and guidance are more important requirements for differently-abled sportspersons, says Sumit Antil, Tokyo Paralympics javelin gold medalist and world record holder (68.55m). “There are a lot of athletes who have talent but don’t have proper guidance or coaching facilities. Also, everyone wants results in a short time, but it doesn’t happen that way. An athlete needs four-five years to reach the next level. The athlete and their team all can do with counseling that can build the patience and resilience needed through the journey. I feel India will do much better then.”

Antil, 24, comes under the F64 category (athletes with leg amputation who compete in a standing position). Like Joshi, he too lost his left leg due to a road accident. It was 2015, and he was a robust Haryana teenager training to be a wrestler. The tragedy left him distraught for a few days. But with time and the support of his strong-willed mother Nirmala Devi, he got over the episode. Asked what he does when he feels low, he says, “I rarely feel low.”

Devendra Jhajharia, Antil’s predecessor in Para javelin eminence, and the first Para athlete to be awarded the Padma Bhushan, also did not lose heart when his left hand had to be amputated after he touched a livewire at the age of eight. Relatives would say to Jhajharia’s parents he was better off dead. The smile vanished from his mother’s face. But Jhajharia told her to ignore insults and promised her he would achieve something in life. He went on to win gold at the 2004 and 2016 Paralympics.

Joshi, who enjoys embroidery and gardening, stresses on the need for egalitarian infrastructure, not just for professional athletes but even for recreational players of any age. Funding from the grassroots levels for bright prospects is another priority, she says.

“Athletes need funding from the lower levels onward, and not just when they make it,” Joshi says. “We also need accessible stadiums and changing rooms. We need safe spaces to play a sport that can be used by everybody. Sport is not restricted to just youngsters. Sports is for all - any age group, any level of ability and any gender.”

When Antil is asked what his success proves to the world, what learning people can take from it, he says, “If you set a target and work hard, nothing is impossible. When I started Para javelin, the world record was 59 metres. Nobody thought that a Para athlete would touch 70m.”

Even more important, he says, is to guard against the human tendency of focusing on what you don’t have instead of being happy with what you have.

“People tend to obsess over what is missing from their lives, and not what they have,” he says. “But I tell myself I have so much. And on the rare occasions I’m low, I remind myself that this too shall pass. The good times will return."