Arunima Sinha
Meet Arunima Sinha, the mountaineer whose
determination can only be gauged as higher than Mount Everest. Her hair-raising
story is not just a story of determination of the highest level but one of a
sublime level which may serve as an inspiration for all and yet may be
impossible to emulate.
Determination must have been in her blood as
Arunima was born in the family of an Army engineer on 20 July 1989. Her
early life was of hardships and struggles as she lost her father
at a very young age, and the family consisted of four children. Being a
resident of Ambedkar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, Arunima had her schooling in the
Government Girls’ Inter College of her hometown. Her hobbies were gardening,
sketching, yoga, travelling and listening to music. She also liked football,
while distinguishing herself as a national level volleyball player. She has
participated in the Nationals, seven times.
Aspiring to join one of the paramilitary forces,
on 12 April 2011, Arunima Sinha boarded the Padmavati Express on her way to
Delhi to appear for her CISF examination. Little did she then know that her
life was about to take a turn for something that neither she nor anyone could
have ever foreseen. A gang of robbers tried to rob the passengers of the
General Compartment in which Arunima was travelling. Arunima resisted when the
hooligans tried to snatch her necklace but she was outnumbered and was pushed
out of the train. She fell on the rail tracks and was unable to move and all that
she remembers is that another train on the adjoining track ran over her left
leg. She recalls: “I resisted the robbers, but they pushed me out of the train.
I could not move. I only remember another train coming towards me. I tried
getting up. But by then, the train had run over my leg. I don’t remember
anything after that.”
She was soon taken to a nearby hospital. After
some initial treatment, Arunima was moved to the All India Institute of Medical
Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. The police department made a mockery of the
investigation by concluding that Arunima may have tried to commit suicide. It
was a judgement of the Allahabad High Court that finally made the Railways pay
Rs 5,00,000/- as compensation to Arunima.
Arunima had been brought to the AIIMS with
injuries to her backbone and also the right leg. While the doctors inserted a
rod in her right leg, to save Arunima’s life, they had to amputate her left leg
below the knee. A local Delhi company financed her for getting a prosthetic
left leg.
For any ordinary mortal, the situation would have
been only looking into a dark and bleak future but not for one whose
inspirations are people like Swami Vivekananda, cricketer Yuvraj Singh and
mountaineer Bachendri Pal. While being treated at AIIMS, she had already
resolved to climb Mount Everest. She was inspired by Yuvraj Singh, who
successfully battled cancer, “to do something” with her life.
She excelled in the basic mountaineering course
from the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, Uttarkashi, and was encouraged by
her elder brother Omprakash to climb Everest with a prosthetic leg. She
contacted Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to climb Mount Everest, and
signed up for training under her at the Uttarkashi camp of the Tata Steel
Adventure Foundation (TSAF) 2012.
Once out of bed, Arunima refused to use crutches
for walking although the doctors feared that another operation would become
necessary if the steel rod tore through the flesh, but the ‘never-say-die’
spirit of the mountaineer-to-be had the last laugh.
On 1 April 2012, Arunima started her first
expedition in Ladakh and scaled the 6,622-metre high Mount Chhamser Kangri. The
same year, as preparation for her Everest expedition, Arunima also scaled the
6,150-metre Island Peak and on 12 April 2013, with sponsors secured by the Rama
Krishna Mission at Vadodara, Arunima was on her way to reach the highest point
on Planet Earth at 8,848 metres.
The 52-day and a last stretch of a 17-hour climb
to the top of the world may have ended as a failure as Arunima’s oxygen level
was below the desired level but not when the person at the other end of the
breathing apparatus is a 5’2” dynamite named Arunima Sinha. On 21 May 2013, the
determined soul left the whole world gaping in awe; Arunima reached the top of
the world!
Incidentally, Arunima was not the first to achieve
such a feat as way back in October 2011, a 61-year old American lady, also a
left leg amputee had scaled Mount Everest but Arunima was definitely the first
Indian woman to achieve this remarkable feat.
As was expected, honours and prizes began to flow. But Arunima, the restless mountaineer, had added yet another dream to her life. She wanted to scale the highest peaks of each of the seven continents. In due course of time, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, Elbrus in Europe, Kosciuszko in Australia, Aconcagua in South America and Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia all lay low to Arunima’s determination. In January 2019, when Arunima scaled Mount Vinson in Antartica, she became the first amputee lady to scale that peak.
Of the many awards that Arunima received, the
Padma Shri could be rated as the highest, but the diminutive mountaineer has
now started focussing on another project: working for the welfare of the
differently-abled, that they too are able to achieve their own goals. In
pursuance of her social magnanimity, Arunima has used all her prize money to
open an academy in the name of the most revered revolutionary: Pandit Chandra
Shekhar Vikalang Khel Academy.
Her autobiography, 'Born Again on the
Mountain', inspires a host of individuals who may be in a state of despair due to their physical
incapacities.
Other than her physical handicap, Arunima’s personal and emotional life also has had its shocks and turmoil. Her first marriage of 2012 fell apart and she remarried in 2018 but nothing seems to stop the flow of Arunima’s determined life. Having set and achieved a goal, she is quick to set another one for herself to achieve. Indeed, a true follower of her idol, Swami Vivekanand; “Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached.”
