Nisha Gupta from Mumbai is a 30-year-old paraplegic woman who lives with her husband and in-laws. Life changed 360 degrees for her when a vacation turned into a life-changing moment.

Enjoying a fun moment with her brothers, Nisha climbed a wall with them to pluck some mangoes. Losing her grip, she fell and fractured her spinal cord which left her paralysed from the waist down forever. The incident happened on May 1, 2004, right after she finished her 12^th standard.

Recalling the incident, she told Your Story, “I thought people fracture their arms and legs all the time but it’s fixed and everything goes back to normal. I didn’t know this was a possibility and I might have to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life,” she reminiscences.

After she was operated on May 6, 2004, she was sent to a rehabilitation centre where they taught her how to adapt to her new condition and after spending five months at the centre, she was discharged. However, being paraplegic at the age of 18 put Nisha under depression. The next four years she spent watching television and sleeping. She then decided to visit her rehabilitation centre again where they suggested her to pay a visit to the Nina Foundation which an NGO for spinal cord injury patients. The doctor put her in touch with the Founder of the NGO, Ketna Mehta.

“They were conducting an event for awareness and that was the first time I went there. I saw Ketnadi on stage and she was dancing in her wheelchair,” Nisha said. “There were a lot of wheelchair users there and I felt like maybe I’m not alone in this. I went back home and told my family about my experience there. For the first time I saw some hope for myself and my new life,” she recalled.

Nisha met a friend and mentor at one of the NGO’s marathons – Oliver, who was also in a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury. He encouraged her to be more independent and travel alone. “He taught me how to do it – tell somebody at home to help you sit in the taxi and wherever you are going you will find somebody to help you get off and there won’t be any problem. I felt good and got more motivated,” Nisha shared. She added, “He influenced me to get into sports because exercise is very important for us. I got into swimming because of him and eventually started playing basketball too.”

Nisha is a national level swimmer and an international basketball player. She has won three state-level gold medals and three national-level bronze medals in swimming. She won a bronze in the 2nd Wheelchair Basketball Tournament held in Delhi in 2015, incidentally the first time she ever played. She also secured the third place in the International Bali Tournament in 2017.

She currently plays for the Maharashtra Women’s Wheelchair Basketball team that secured the fourth place in the 2017 Nationals. She was also felicitated by Sudha Chandran on Women’s Day for her achievements.

Talking about the influence of sports on her life, she said, “Sports has given a new meaning and direction to my life. Whatever I am today, it’s all thanks to the sports I play. I feel like a normal person when I play because I am able to do the same things as others.”

“Nobody is going to help you unless you help yourselves. We need to show other people and the government that we exist,” she says.

To keep herself fit she practices and exercises every day. She shared, “I work out every day and increase the intensity close to a match so that I am fully prepared for it. I practice moving quickly on my wheelchair for an hour every day.”

H/T: Your Story