Some stories are not just to be read: they are to be lived, felt, and passed on. The world of the Paralympics offers such stories in abundance. If sport is the purest distillation of the human spirit, then para-sport is its most poetic expression – often painful, often invisible, but always unforgettable.
We live in a country that has long overlooked the stories of people with disabilities. But that tide is turning, slowly yet powerfully. Today, India is not only witnessing the rise of para-athletes but is also learning to celebrate their journeys. Not as side notes to the ‘mainstream’ but as epic narratives that deserve centrestage.
Books have always been my refuge and guide and lately, I find myself drawn to those that illuminate the lives of Paralympic champions. These are not just sports memoirs. They are meditations on identity, acceptance, and the relentless pursuit of purpose. One such book is Beyond the Surface by Jessica Long, one of the most decorated Paralympians in the world. Born in Siberia, adopted in the United States, and a double amputee by the age of two, Jessica went on to win 31 Paralympic medals, 18 of them gold. But her most powerful reflections come from outside the pool. “No achievement will make us feel worthy unless we can love ourselves without judgment,” she writes. It’s a lesson many high-achievers, disabled or otherwise, struggle to embrace.
Closer home, we have Bring It On by Deepa Malik, an unflinching, inspiring account of a woman who chose to live life on her own terms after being paralysed from the chest down. Besides winning medals, including a silver at the Rio 2016 Paralympics, Deepa rode bikes, ran a restaurant, supported her daughter through illness, and took up rally driving, refusing to let her wheelchair define her trajectory.
As we approach the New Delhi 2025 World Para Athletics Championships, the largest para-sport event ever to be hosted in India, with over 1,000 athletes expected, we stand at the cusp of a new narrative. For decades, para-athletes in India trained in obscurity, received limited support, and fought against systemic apathy. That has begun to change, and not just because of policy shifts or corporate sponsorship, though both have helped. What truly changed was our willingness to listen to their stories.
The book Crossing The Barriers, by Abhishek Dubey and Mahavir Rawat, does exactly that: it gives voice to 23 Indian Paralympic medal winners, from Murlikant Petkar [India’s first Paralympic gold medallist in 1972] to Avani Lekhara and Suhas Yathiraj. These are testimonies of courage in the face of invisible odds. They reveal what happens when people dare to dream in a world that wasn’t built for them.
India’s performance at the 2024 Paris Paralympics was a landmark moment: 29 medals, including seven golds, a sharp rise from the single silver won in 2012. In just over a decade, India moved from 67th to 18th in the medal tally. It was momentum built through better infrastructure, increased media coverage, and a shift in public perception. Of course, none of this would have been possible without Sir Ludwig Guttmann. We have to acknowledge the legacy of this Jewish neurologist who fled Nazi Germany and founded the Stoke Mandeville Games, which evolved into the Paralympic Games.
As someone who has spent the last decade advocating for inclusion through the India Inclusion Foundation, I can say with certainty: these stories are changing the world. They are not about overcoming disability but about reimagining ability. The rise of para-sports in India is not merely producing champions; we are creating a new national narrative, one that recognises that strength often comes dressed in silence, in steel limbs, in wheeled chairs, and in unspoken battles fought far from the limelight.
And like any good story it is still being written.
(The writer’s views are personal)