Sita
Sahu: A golden girl, fallen on hard times…
Disability. Let’s take a moment
to contemplate that word.
What is disability? Is it the
inability to do things that most people can? Or is it our collective failure to
recognise the achievements of a truly monumental nature and felicitate them
commensurately. We believe that disability is the latter, not the former, as
this story shall aptly demonstrate.
As Indians, we cannot refute
the fact that we are a cricket crazy nation. Very often, this means that we
will ignore the achievements of athletes from other sports. Sad, but true, this
is the case with selfless athletes who often remain faceless and unfeted, for
their monumental achievements that should make us all proud to feel Indian.
Meet Sita Sahu. She’s 18, she’s
mentally disabled and she sells pani puri for a living. Nothing too remarkable
on the surface, is it? But when you hear of her staggering achievements on the
grandest stage of them all, the Olympics, you will simply wonder, why this
remarkable young lady is struggling to make ends meet! At the 2011 Athens
Paralympics (the Olympics for the disabled), Sita Sahu won two bronze medals,
in the 200m and 1600m events, making the
country proud.
Image Link: http://static.sportskeeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/sita2-1543925-1437063252-800.jpg
Circa 2013, a news report in
the Times of India cited that this remarkable young woman was reduced to
selling pani puri to provide for her family. The story of Sita is a story of
India’s disability, our disability as a nation to provide for our Olympic
heroes, our apathy and sheer negligence towards a section of our populace that
does so much, but remains underappreciated.
On her return from Athens, the
young Sita was promised the world, employment, financial assistance and even
job assistance, but now nearly 5 years after her great triumph, nothing of what
was promised to her, has come her way. If this isn’t a scathing indictment of
our collective failure to recognise and make amends for the disrespect to the
heroes of our nation, we don’t know what is…
In the interim, Sita remains
positive and looks back on her performance at Athens as the crowning glory of
her young life. We salute this #TrueDiamond, and wish her nothing but the
absolute best for her humility, courage and indomitable spirit. This is what
the Olympian spirit is all about.
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