It is a day he does not like reliving. Not just because of the pain, but because he has left it so far behind. He was a 21-year-old civil engineer, on his way back home to Balod from Bilaspur on a train. As the train set off, he slipped and fell, right into the gap that train and metro announcements make public warnings about. In 24 days, he lost both his legs. Five-and-a-half years later, Chitrasen Sahu has set up the state wheelchair basketball team, fought for his right to drive, and on September 23, became India’s first double amputee to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. All on his two prosthetic legs, and an iron will.
His family and friends never let his morale fall, and that was tonic for his mental health. “They never let me feel that something bad has happened. If you can’t say something positive, don’t say something negative either,” he said.
An employee with the Chhattisgarh Housing Board now, Sahu attended a camp set up by the Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India in 2017 in Rajnandgaon.
At 11 am on September 23, Sahu took the last final steps to Mt Kilimanjaro. He wants to scale Mount Everest.
Read more of this story of courage in a report by Dipankar Ghose published in The Indian Express... (Link given below)
