CHENNAI: This Army centre is different. It is a life-giver — a place where injured Armymen can turn their nightmare into a beautiful dream and conjure inspiring tales of fortitude and belief. It’s the story of the Army Paralympic Node, Pune, country’s only centre that helps to rehabilitate injured soldiers through sports.
They are some of the fittest people on earth. They are battle-hardened and can carry out any operations at any time oblivious of any danger. Not until calamity strikes, either during deadly operations, training or even freak accidents. Some are confined to wheelchairs while others walk with the help of an artificial limb or are without fingers and hands. Suddenly, their normal world turns into an endless ordeal of both body and mind. If not for sport, they would have languished in the abyss of depression.
Ask Wing Commander Shantanu, who is paralysed chest down after a freak motorcycle accident in Hasimara (North Bengal). "When you were in active duty you are a person doing normal duty and all of a sudden you realise you are differently-abled. That’s when reality strikes and that feeling can kill you,” he said on the sidelines of the Para-athletics national championships here. Shantanu was India’s first para-rower to compete in international competition. Now he has shifted to para-athletics. “Sports has given me belief,” he said. "I used to cry and it took me more than six months to come out of depression.”
Hokato Sema, the Paris Paralympic Games bronze medallist (the first from the Army to win a Paralympic medal), who finished second at the para-nationals in Chennai also found solace in sport. He lost his leg during an anti-insurgency operation in 2002 but it was not until 2016 (the centre was yet to be officially established), he started training. Until then he did not know what to do. The node started with just 10 athletes in 2017, Hokato was one of them. “We started with 10 and now we have 48 para-athletes,” said Nitten Mehta, the secretary of the Army Paralympic Node.
“One must understand that all these athletes in the para node were once normal people leading a normal life. Suddenly there has been a tragedy due to service accidents or otherwise, and then they are at the rock bottom of their mental state. Sports gives them a second chance.” The institute is home to both war and insurgency-hit area operation casualties. It also accommodates those who meet with accidents during training or while on duty. Some have lost their arm or a leg, but because of sports, not their hope.