The Adaptive Victor

I am Colonel Gaurav Dutta. I was born into the army. My father was in the army as well.

And then I was commissioned by the Indian Military Academy in 1991.

This was my passion and I wanted to be an army man as well.

I have loved sports since my childhood days.

I got all the advantages that one gets in the army regarding playing sports and I kept learning new sports.

In July of 2001, while in the line of control in Jammu & Kashmir, we went to set up an ambush.

I stepped on an anti-personnel mine during this time and injured my left leg.

It took a lot of time to evacuate me as we were far away from the road head. And it took about 11 and a half hours for me to reach the hospital and I had already bled a lot.

*
I received a call on July 7th, 2001, and my husband’s voice was crisp and strong and I was so excited to hear his voice but there was this nagging feeling at the back of my mind and I said, “Where are you?”

And he said, “oh there’s been a little incident and I’ve got hurt”.

So it sounded very normal. He being accident prone and he then in the same breath said, “I’ve lost a leg. I’ve lost my leg.”

And it was like, unbelievable because he was sounding very fine to me and this happened but I said he is fine and that’s more important to me, he is alive, he is…and we’ll get through this.

I stayed in the Command Hospital, Pune for 10 months during which I got a lot of time to think and plan how to live my life ahead.

During this time, at Artificial Limb Center, Pune, which is now celebrating its 80th anniversary, our prosthetic limbs are fitted over there.

All the injured armed soldiers are admitted there.

I want to mention that there are facilities for civilians and non-military personnel, there as well.

I was given a prosthetic limb there and i was also taught how to walk with it.

It is easy to think that yes, with the limb an amputee can now walk, but your brain has to re-adjust after losing a limb.

Learning to walk after amputation is similar to a young child learning to walk.

But as I was a sportsman, I did not have fear of falling, and i did not have any apprehensions of what would happen if I fall. So I did not take much time to learn walking, as others usually do.

I fell once or twice, but because I did not have that fear, I learnt quite fast.

And if you see me today, you won’t even know one of my legs is artificial.

*

So, it was a month from the time the incident took place and he was in Pune, I joined him and that’s when all, I think my fears of what is life going to be, all started coming up and I had nobody to talk about.

I had to be the strong one for the whole family and also be strong for my husband, which was very important.

And so I started surfing the net and I found that there was no support group in India where I could talk to someone and then I found a support group in Canada.

And an old gentleman who was running it, Dan Sorkins, he answered all my questions and that’s how most of my fears were getting over.

It’s not just the person who loses a limb or a body part, who is going through the trauma, it’s the family, it’s the caretaker.

I started “Indian Amputees” a support group and a few doctors gave…gave their time, like a surgeon, orthopedic surgeon, a prosthetic engineer, a counselor and we would have uh meet people like my…who were going through the similar situation, their families, and we were able to communicate.

Counseling was done and people were very happy.

It was like a healing process, not just for them but also for me.

A few journalists covered what I was doing, so it was a word…something like people who read about what I was doing, joined.

They came, they wanted to see and we were like a family.

We’re sharing information, feelings which uh I found that you are able to relate.

Being a caregiver myself, I came to realize that it’s not just the person you’re taking care of, you have to take care of yourself, so it means you have to move for sometime, do the things you used to do, enjoy.

Because you can’t…being selfless and taking care will take its toll and it will affect your relationship with the person you…so, this is very important.

I want to tell every caregiver, please love yourself and take care of yourself as you are doing to the person you’re taking care of.

*

Within 10 months of being in Command Hospital, Pune, I thought of a lot of things.

There were 8 more officers like me there, who were amputees, some of them had posting left for 3 months or 3 years.

So, there were a lot of questions like, what to do or how to do it, how to spend our time.

We couldn’t sleep at night because of the pain.

So, during the daytime we used to play gully cricket in the courtyard.

Someone had the idea to play football, so inside the ward where there is some dry land, we started playing football while using crutches.

So, it came to my head, despite the injury, if we can play these games, why can’t I play when I am out of here?

So I started playing golf after getting discharged from the hospital.

I had received a basic prosthetic limb after my surgery.

Because I wanted to play golf, I contacted the Artificial Limb Center and they reverted back saying they could give me a better, sophisticated limb.

They don’t provide sophisticated limbs right at the beginning because amputees are just learning to walk then, but now I was ready for that.

The limb I am wearing now was given to me by the Artificial Limb Center.

This has many sophisticated components, it is very comfortable and I have been wearing it for 4 years now.

Golf is a game that I love a lot and swimming is a game that does not put much pressure on the body of the disabled person, in this case, amputees, so I thought, why not try to play these games again?

In 2009, Indian Wheelchair Amputee Sports were conducted in Bangalore, two other officers of the army and I participated in it.

I won bronze and we won three gold medals

In 2018, the Army Paralympic Node was raised, and I had the honor to raise it.

The players of the Army Paralympic Node contributed by winning many medals in the next four years.

We saw a change in the aspiration and the mindsets of the family members of these players.

The same soldier who once questioned their own worth because they did not have a leg, they didn’t know how to carry on with their work (farming) in their villages, who thought no-one would care for them or that now they’re a burden on their families, the same soldier appears on television now, they trend over social media, their families are proud of them, the entire Indian army is proud of them.

He who thought his life was over, has a new beginning in life and lives it with courage.