Rugby on a Wheelchair

During sessions of physiotherapy, Riya Gupta, who is quadriplegic, was introduced to Quad Rugby played on wheelchairs.

Numbness is a feeling I didn’t know well. I was first introduced to it six years ago. It was 5 September 2007, seconds after I dived into in a swimming pool on hearing my coach’s angry call. As soon as I dived in, my head hit the floor of the pool. I felt something in my neck. It had cracked as the entire weight of my body had fallen on it. I tried to move as I thought I was going to drown. I couldn’t turn and I could barely feel my arms. My friends outside the pool thought I was fooling around, that I was up to some underwater antics. I could hear them call out to me. But no one pulled me out. I then remembered our coach’s instructions to move our legs as if cycling in water, to avoid drowning. I tried moving. Nothing happened. I could not feel my legs.

I had been a swimming champion in school and I knew all the four strokes. I was in Class VIII when the accident happened. There was an inter-school championship in a week’s time, and my coach wanted me to practise well. Our school didn’t have a swimming pool, but we would hire a pool close by for practice. We also had a social studies exam the next day. I remember feeling unwell, not really up to either. I tried my luck with the coach, requesting an exemption from practice that day. He refused. In the dressing room, I was praying that the exam be cancelled, and was rather muddled in my thoughts when I stepped out. I heard my coach asking me to jump angrily. I dived straight into the pool, without noticing that I was at the shallow-end of the pool and the water was barely three-feet deep.

When I came to, I was in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital. My friends and coach pulled me out of the water and took me to a hospital nearby once they realised I was injured. My parents were informed by the school. I had a fracture on my neck, which had damaged cervical vertebrae C-5 and C-6. The nerves around these vertebrae, called cervical nerves, are extremely fragile, just like noodles, and cannot be operated upon. The accident left me paralysed neck down. I had no sensation in my torso, arms and legs. My fingers had gone limp and I had no control over my bowel movement. This disability is called quadriplegia. My life changed within a few seconds of that dive. At the age of 13, I was bound to a wheelchair for life.

I was in the hospital for 23 days, before I was sent home. The school paid partially for the expenses, but my parents didn’t know what to do. None of us had really processed what had happened, I had thought of it as just another injury from which I’d recover soon. We were in denial, and my mother took me for all kinds of treatment. We tried homeopathy, ayurveda, even acupressure. My youngest brother, Dhruv, was barely two years old at the time, and my mother would have to leave him with our relatives. My younger brother, Aditya, was ten and my parents had to put him in a government-aided boarding school because there was no one to take care of him.

My father worked with a property dealer and his salary could not pay for my treatment; the school refused to help us after we left the hospital. We decided to put out a request for monetary help through a helpline number.

A doctor responded to this and came forward to help. He explained the nature of the injury to us and told us that all our efforts to find a ’cure’ were futile. We had to stop running around like headless chicken. He asked me accept the fact that I would never recover, and referred me to the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC) in Vasant Kunj, Delhi.

In the meanwhile, my father decided to move court as the school refused to provide any monetary help. He filed a case through Delhi High Court lawyer Ashok Aggarwal; in 2012, the High court ordered the school to pay damages worth Rs 8.5 lakh. During this period, I lost touch with most of my school friends. Due to the case in court, our teachers had forbidden them from contacting me. The school authorities had threatened to fail them if they did. Most of them gradually got busy with school and exams and I was left alone, missing school and friends.

We first went to ISIC in 2008. I started taking physiotherapy sessions to strengthen my muscles. That was also a time when I had started feeling sorry for myself, but walking into ISIC always felt different. There were people like me—most of them were wheelchair bound. Some would be happy and cheerful while some would be depressed. I heard stories of how they landed there, in the waiting hall of the centre, just as I did. Suddenly, my problems didn’t feel so bad at all.

At the Centre, I learnt how to operate the wheelchair. It had become an important part of my life after the accident but I dreaded it. I learnt to ‘be friends’ with it and now it functions like a limb for me. I learnt how to reconstruct a new life and be more independent. I learnt how to change my clothes and turn around while lying down. Since my fingers had become completely dysfunctional, I had to re-learn how to write. I can now write by holding a pen with both hands and do most of Aditya’s project-work. No one can tell that it has been done by a quadriplegic patient.

It was here that I was introduced to Quad Rugby. Also known as Wheel Chair rugby, it is a Paralympic sport meant for people with limb-related difficulties. The sport involves two teams; each team has up to 12 players. However, only four—two ‘attackers’ and two ‘defenders’—from each team can play at a time on court. The defenders have to carry the rugby ball to their goal post, dodging the attackers who ‘wedge’ their wheelchairs in the defenders’ wheelchair to prevent them from doing so. It is a pretty rough game, like normal rugby is. I am a ‘defender and the youngest on my team.

I was introduced to the sport by American filmmaker Jonathan Sigworth, who became a quadriplegic after he was injured as a unicycler in Mussourie. He was at the Centre in 2008, and told us about the sport, which is very popular in the United States. A bunch of us got interested and started practising with him. I also made a group of friends—all boys and older than me. When we realised that the sport was part of international championships, we formed a team and started playing seriously. Twelve of us, with members from cities like Delhi, Ghaziabad and Pune, now make up the Indian team. Jonathan, who shuttles between India and the States, has made a film on us. It is called More than Walking.

We played our first demo match with Brazil in Delhi and visited South Korea in November to participate in the Paralympic Games held there. It was my first international trip, and I made it without taking any help from my family. They are extremely proud of me. Since I am the only girl on my team, everyone in South Korea recognised me from the film. There are very few girls who play this sport in Asia.

The best part about playing Quad Rugby is that I have made a new set of friends. We meet at the Centre every Saturday and practise the game. Sometimes, we plan trips like lunch at a mall or a picnic at India Gate. I love watching movies, but the last movie I saw was Salman Khan’s Ready in 2011. Very few of our theatres have facilities for wheelchairs; the ones that do are very expensive; tickets can be priced at Rs 1,200 on a weekend.

I am trying to complete Class XII through open school, and I am hoping to go to college soon. I am 19 and most of my friends are already through their second year of college. But I am wary of planning ahead now. Sometimes I still wonder what happened six years ago. Most of my friends at the Centre talk about how their past bad deeds or thoughts may have caused their injuries. I don’t know what I did to be like this.

My mother has plastered one part of a wall in my room with pictures of deities, believing that they will look after me. I feel I wouldn’t have been like this if the gods were looking out for me, so I have decided to keep them at a distance in my life. I would rather have posters of Ranbir Kapoor and Salman Khan in my room, but my mom will not allow this.

As told to Aanchal Bansal

About The Author

Riya Gupta