Skip to main content

Handicap is in the mind


Handicap is in the mind.  Arunima Sinha is one of the many individuals who have proved that right.

When she was 23, Arunima was attacked by thieves in a running train and pushed out.  The train that whizzed past on the next track ran over her leg which was amputated.  The police in Incredible India made a theory that she had tried to commit suicide.  She had to fight the pain of her physical handicap and the more terrible pain of the mental agony thrown in gratuitously by the police.

Source
Being a sportswoman must have helped her.  She was a volleyball player.  She decided to face the challenges, both physical and mental.  She decided to conquer the Everest with the prosthetic leg that her doctors would provide.

A dream and full confidence in yourself.  That’s the secret of success.  She had already conquered the Everest the moment the dream was born inside her because she had the confidence in herself that she could make her dream real.

Two years after the accident, Arunima Sinha became the first woman with a prosthetic leg to conquer Mount Everest.  “I have little patience for wonders of faith, destiny, kismet and the like. We chart our own destiny. It is my firmest conviction that luck will favour those who have the drive and the tenacity to win.”  Arunima said later.

Recently Arunima was in news for conquering Indonesia’s highest peak, Carstensz Pyramid, which is tough to climb because of the rain forest and the terrain.  Between the Everest and Carstensz Pyramid, Arunima’s dream took her to the peaks of Kilimanjaro in Africa, Elbrus in Europe, Kosizko in Australia and Aconcagua in Argentina.

It’s your grit that matters.  Destiny will bow before you if you have the grit.  Handicap is in the mind, not in the body.




Labels:

Comments

  1. none to be knownSeptember 10, 2016 at 3:12 AM

    Life on earth is as simple as two lines'know what you are and learn how to conquer yourself as you are your greatest enemy'. Being practical many of them fails to conquer fear,which draws them back. Leaen to make mistakes before making it correct. Care about what you feel of yourselves. Learn from mistakes and then you can be invincible.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rakhi JayashankarSeptember 10, 2016 at 7:00 AM

    I have always been complaining till date about the injustices against women. But lately likes like Arunima opened my eyes to the reality that its the mind that matters. I would love to read her story

    ReplyDelete
  3. Durga Prasad DashSeptember 10, 2016 at 7:38 AM

    That is nicely said.Handicap is in the mind not i the body.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownSeptember 10, 2016 at 3:24 PM

    Dear Sir.
    Very well said, Handicap is in the mind. Infact each and every experience of our life is experienced by us, through our mind.Human mind is itself a dynamic creation, which has tremendous power and can do miracles.So we just need to use the potential of our mind.
    People like Arumina has done it. Vo zindigi hi kya, jisme koi Namumkin khwab na hoo.
    Salute to Arunima and her dreams.

    ReplyDelete
  5. BushraSeptember 10, 2016 at 5:04 PM

    :/ Such an inspiring person. I feel so bad now for being so lazy.. Appreciating things before they are snatched away from you is a must.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Alok singhalSeptember 11, 2016 at 6:09 PM

    I read about her sometime back too, she is indeed an inspiration to many!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Renu VyasSeptember 11, 2016 at 7:16 PM

    Well said Sir, I agree on this.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
17 comments
Read more

Ram, Anandhi, and Co

Book Review Title: Ram C/o Anandhi Author: Akhil P Dharmajan Translator: Haritha C K Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2025 Pages: 303 T he author tells us in his prefatory note that “this (is) a cinematic novel.” Don’t read it as literary work but imagine it as a movie. That is exactly how this novel feels like: an action-packed thriller. The story revolves around Ram, a young man who lands in Chennai for joining a diploma course in film making, and Anandhi, receptionist of Ram’s college. Then there are their friends: Vetri and his half-sister Reshma, and Malli who is a transgender. An old woman, who is called Paatti (grandmother) by everyone and is the owner of the house where three of the characters live, has an enviably thrilling role in the plot.   In one of the first chapters, Ram and Anandhi lock horns over a trifle. That leads to some farcical action which agitates Paatti’s bees which in turn fly around stinging everyone. Malli, the aruvani (transgender), s...
8 comments
Read more

The Blind Lady’s Descendants

Book Review Title: The Blind Lady’s Descendants Author: Anees Salim Publisher: Penguin India 2015 Pages: 301 Price: Rs 399 A metaphorical blindness is part of most people’s lives.  We fail to see many things and hence live partial lives.  We make our lives as well as those of others miserable with our blindness.  Anees Salim’s novel which won the Raymond & Crossword award for fiction in 2014 explores the role played by blindness in the lives of a few individuals most of whom belong to the family of Hamsa and Asma.  The couple are not on talking terms for “eighteen years,” according to the mother.  When Amar, the youngest son and narrator of the novel, points out that he is only sixteen, Asma reduces it to fifteen and then to ten years when Amar refers to the child that was born a few years after him though it did not survive.  Dark humour spills out of every page of the book.  For example: How reckless Akmal was! ...
5 comments
Read more

A Curious Case of Food

From CNN  whose headline is:  Holy cow! India is the world's largest beef exporter The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is perhaps the only novel I’ve read in which food plays a significant, though not central, role, particularly in deepening the reader’s understanding of Christopher Boone’s character. Christopher, the protagonist, is a 15-year-old autistic boy. [For my earlier posts on the novel, click here .] First of all, food is a symbol of order and control in the novel. Christopher’s relationship with food is governed by strict rules and routines. He likes certain foods and detests a few others. “I do not like yellow things or brown things and I do not eat yellow or brown things,” he tells us innocently. He has made up some of these likes and dislikes in order to bring some sort of order and predictability in a world that is very confusing for him. The boy’s food preferences are tied to his emotional state. If he is served a breakfast o...
6 comments
Read more