Mumbai: When in 2010, Deepa Malik decided to participate in the Common Wealth Games, she was a nobody. Locking down a money-minting restaurant business, leaving behind the comfort of her wheel-chair friendly bedroom, Malik, with 2/3rd of her non-functional body, decided to go with the ‘power of intention’.
Not many believed in her. Several ‘stereotyped’ questions were thrown at her: ‘How are you ever going to get out of that room? How can you cook? Don’t you have two daughters to look after? Aren’t you too old to take up fancy challenges?’
“But,” as Malik said, with pride, in a room surrounded by journalists, “Here I am. The first woman to win a Paralympic medal for India.”
None of it was easy. It was a long-planned journey that had two possible conclusions, success or a lifetime of failure.
Malik was only 19 when she was diagnosed with a spinal tumour. Her physical health went from bad to worse as she aged.
Today, the 49-year-old is without a torso back, seven of her vertebral arteries chopped, a spine that has been cut open thrice, a dysfunctional bladder and half-functioning lungs. Despite all, she trained day-and-night. The dumbbells she lifted weighed 15 kgs.
Not overlooking other obstacles, like she narrated: “I was preparing for Javelin throw all along. Having won two Asian medals in ‘category 53’, I was sure of winning gold in the 2016 Rio Paralympics. But then suddenly the final event list comes up and I am told that my category has been excluded. The big day I was awaiting doesn’t exist anymore. It was like a dead end.”
She may not be physically fit, but nothing could snatch away her mental strength. Determined, Malik then shifted her focus to shot put, an equipment which weighs 4 kgs, compared to a 600-gram Javelin stick.
She had 11 months to do the impossible.
“When I qualified in 2015 World Championship, the ‘A’ level mark was 3.60 metres and I threw a 3.67, barely inching the ‘A’ level mark. There, but yet not there. With a world ranking 9, and 11 months in hand, I go to Rio Paralympic,” she said – with journalists in the room waiting to applause – and added, “I threw a distance of 4.61.”
Malik wasn’t recalling her journey for anything.
Once again, her first-ever ‘defeat’ – the destiny and her body – is back to pull her down.
Just as she became the master in her field, the doctors warned her she may lose her arm. She had to discontinue playing any form of sport that put any pressure on the cervical region.
“I have participated in six Paralympic championships, now I can’t. Tokyo 2020 has nothing for me to offer. Knowing that I still have it in me to win another medal for India, it hurts, it really does,” she exclaimed.
“But now,” she added, “Do I stagnate and disappear in oblivion? Do I jump off the cliff? Die, because I can’t play?”
“No!” she raised her pitch.
Because Malik is Malik, she has always found a way out. Her aim in 2020 is to teach professionals the ‘Art of Losing’ – an initiative taken by International Institute of Sports Management (IISM) to provide working professionals an opportunity to tap their unexplored skills with the help of inspirational sportsmen like Malik, former India hockey captain Viren Rasquinha, football maestro Baichung Bhutia, badminton legend Pullela Gopichand, and others.
As Malik concluded: “Winners don’t do different things, they just do it differently. And that’s the X factor that we are trying to put in for the people who would enrol for this programme. These problems are not unique to anyone. We are all on the same boat, it’s just that we need to continue to sail against the winds.”
