Hi, my name is Sharad Kumar, I'm a Paralympic Athlete of India.
I represent my country in a 42 category in high jump.
I was about 2 years old.
I was detected with polio then.
The reason being was very uncertain and later after confirmation I got to know that due
to the piracies and maybe duplications of the medicines, I was caught into that whole
scam.
But for me, I think it came as a boon too.
Somewhere down the line, what was supposed to happen, which was thought to be a very
bad thing and a disrespectful thing in my country, turned out to be like a blessing in
disguise.
I was sent to St. Paul's school gargling.
For us, there is no differentiation between sports and education.
If I have four classes of education, I need to have four classes of sports.
If I am not well in any one of them, it's better to pack my bags and go home.
I don't know how did this happen, but he was very, very much thoughtful.
He thought, since he's disabled, maybe he thought a little while.
Let's let him go with his own vision, be it studies or something extracurricular.
When he came to extracurricular, I explained to him how sports made me very much forget
about my disability and forget about the wrong thoughts that used to come into my mind.
It got me occupied.
So that's how he tried to understand that.
It's a very emotional moment for me to be in London.
The things I have gone through, it just revives.
It makes me think and it makes me realize that what I lost then need to gain it here.
And it is still the same.
The crowd here is amazing.
The support is amazing.
We athletes are prepared well too.
And hence, I feel that the atmosphere is very much like Olympics or Paralympics or maybe
more.
Actually, I think Paralympics is a way of counseling.
It's the best way of counseling you.
It's the best way to say that how you are there, you exist, you're part of the society
and such big event organized for you too.
And this is immense.
And this is how we need to see that initially when somebody discriminates us and we say,
oh, this person is discriminating me this way.
But then we see these games happening.
We know, no, they're not discriminating us.
They're discriminating us.
There are a lot of people who are thinking for us too that we are part of the society,
we exist.
And let us all think the same.
I'm telling you still, we in India are taking Paralympics to all new levels.
That means participation of sports for all disabled people.
That's all.
Let's take it to that level.
