Bright and bubbly, her fingers dextrously scrolling down social media pages, 19-year-old Palak Kohli seems just like any other teenager.
That’s until she steps out on the badminton court. It takes a moment to absorb the athletic ability on show as she flurries through some absurdly quick rallies, forehand and backhand. The transformation is almost magical.
Born with an underdeveloped arm, Palak was the youngest Indian Para-badminton player at the Tokyo Paralympics last summer. It’s been an arduous journey to get where she is.
In many smaller towns and villages around India there is very little awareness about Para-sport. Palak and her parents hadn’t even heard the term Para-badminton before 2016.
A year later, after a chance encounter with a “stranger” who would become her future coach, she picked up a racquet for the first time. By 2019, she’d won her first international tournament.
“As a child I never thought of taking any sports. Everywhere I used to hear it’s not for me because of my disability,” she says.
“But I decided to challenge myself. I transformed my disability into a super-ability and Para-badminton has changed my life.”
Palak is one of a new brood of female Para-athletes in India who are challenging norms, rewriting the history books, winning medals and forcing people around them to change their perspectives on disability and gender.
Avani Lekhara is another. Also 19, in Tokyo she became the first Indian female to win Paralympic gold. Her victory in the women’s 10m air rifle standing SH1 category was followed by a bronze medal in the 50m rifle 3-positions SH1 competition.
Paralysed from the waist down in a car accident at the age of 10, shooting gave her a new lease of life. She faced many obstacles, such as the absence of ramps at the shooting range and a lack of customised equipment, as well as the serious emotional trauma of her accident. But her ambition never wavered.
Meeting her, on a breezy winter’s morning in the city of Jaipur, you can see why she is at the top.
The discipline of a monk, the focus of a hawk, philosophical like a sage and with an attitude that seeks perfection. She has everything it takes.
“After my accident my world turned upside down,” she says. “I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. What do you expect from a 10-year-old? I was an introvert before the accident and became more so.
“The turning point was shooting. It gave me a lot of self-confidence.
“[But] it’s not that one is happy all the time. You have to go in front of the mirror every day and say: ‘This is the body I am in, I am in love with this body. I am capable, I can do anything, I am deserving.'”
Many sportswomen in India still face societal opposition and gender discrimination when they decide to pursue a career as an athlete. Poverty and a lack of facilities are also big hindrances. Disabled female athletes have to overcome all that and more.
Simran Sharma, 23, became the first Indian athlete to compete in the Paralympic 100m sprint in Tokyo. She was born prematurely and with a visual impairment.
“During childhood even my own relatives and family members used to bully me,” she says.
“Because I can’t concentrate my vision properly on any object they would say horrible things like ‘this girl looks here and talks there’. It was very hurtful.”
Sharma was a natural sprinter at school but her parents did not have the means to get her trained. When she was married at the age of 18, the man who became her husband also became her coach.
The local community in her husband’s village was aghast at the idea of a new bride going out running instead of taking up the household responsibilities.
But despite strong opposition, Sharma did not give in. She went on to claim 100m victory at two World Para-athletics Grands Prix in 2019 and 2021. In Tokyo she finished fifth in her heat with a season’s best but missed out on a place in the final.
She says the same family members who would taunt her for her disability are proud of her today.
“Para-sport saved me actually,” she adds. “It gave me a new identity and a new-found respect as a disabled person in a patriarchal society.”
At Rio 2016, Deepa Malik became the first Indian woman to win a medal at any Paralympics, with shot put silver. At the Tokyo Games held last summer there was a first ever gold in female competition as the country sent its largest ever delegation, although women made up less than 30%.
Another of those competing was 34-year-old Bhavina Patel, who also made history by becoming the first Indian to win a table tennis medal at the Paralympics, with silver.
Disabled athletes never used to get much attention in the media in India. But success means things have started changing. There has been a gradual shift in the societal outlook too.
Lekhara is hopeful.
“Being a female athlete is a hard,” she says. “We get fewer chances. But whatever chances they are getting, Indian sportswomen are performing very well and in the future there will be equal medallists from both genders.
“There’s a long way to go. But we are on the right track and we have a bright future.”
