Sports

Martial Arts

From age five, self-taught martial arts expert Puran Chauhan, has refused to let disability run his life.

Not everyone could have fought off a gang of knife-wielding chain snatchers, punching and kicking them unconscious and saving a young woman from a heavy loss.

But not everyone has the number of black belts under their real ones that Puran Chauhan does.

On the other hand, almost everybody has two legs. Puran has only one.

Puran grew up in Rampur in Uttar Pradesh, and was just five years old when he lost his right leg while trying to save his schoolmates from a speeding truck. Twenty-three years later, he says the adversity brought out the best in him. “Defeat is of the mind. It has nothing to do with your physical abilities. I have never let my mind be overwhelmed.”

Determined to prove himself stronger than the accident, Puran decided he wanted to learn the martial arts. “My school coach refused to train me; when I came for lessons, he asked if I wanted to lose my other leg as well. I took it as a challenge, and started to train myself by reading books and watching movies,” he relates.

Since he did not know how much practice to put in and what to learn, Puran worked much harder at the discipline than he needed to and started to attain mastery in not one but six forms of martial art: judo, karate, kung fu, taekwando and kalaripayattu. But finding a place in martial arts’ competitions was hard. “I learnt long ago about living with one leg, but people always seem more concerned about my lost leg than with what I can do with the remaining one,” Puran says. But in spite of all the odds against him, Puran went on to win about 20 national-level competitions in various streams of the martial arts. In 2001, a South Korean coach saw him during one such competition and took him back to his country. A year’s training there helped Puran achieve the inconceivable — he became a black belt fifth dan in judo, karate, kung fu and taekwando.

But his skill was not enough to earn him a living. After he came back to India, Puran was at loose ends until the chain-snatching incident brought him to the attention of the Delhi Police, which invited him to train its work force. Puran sees his work with the force as his contribution towards helping control the capital’s spiralling crime rate: “Training the police is like tackling crime indirectly,” he beams.

Then came the chance of a lifetime. National Geographic heard of his story and decided to cast him in a seven-part series on the martial arts titled Seven Deadly Arts. Puran was taken on board as the instructor of film star Akshay Kumar, who was anchoring the show. The series went on to become a grand success. Says a proud Yogesh Sahu, the series director, “I read a newspaper report about how the show had set off a mad rush of students to martial arts’ training institutes. Credit for that certainly goes to Puran — watching him, people thought that if he could perform the way he does after loosing a leg, why couldn’t they do the same?”

Luck started to favour Chauhan from this time on. During the Seven Deadly Arts shoot in Manali, he came in contact with director Anil Sharma, who was shooting there for his film Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Sathiyo. Impressed by Chauhan’s talent, Sharma not only offered him a small role in the film but also requested him to assist veteran fight master Tinu Verma. “The kinds of stunts he showed me left me awestruck,” says Verma. Since then, Chauhan has worked with Tinu and Mahendra Verma in a number of films such as Big Brother and Tom, Dick and Harry and in Sharma’s upcoming film Apne.

At home, Manju, Puran’s wife of five years, hero-worships him. “What a normal person cannot dream of in 28 lives, he has achieved in just 28 years — there is nobody like him in the world,” says she. But Puran is not one to rest on old laurels — among his many other plans, he wants to make a movie with never-before stunts and he also dreams of helping as many disabled people as possible realise their dreams. Knowing his grit and his achievements, no ambition he chooses to follow can ever be too far-fetched.

Source: Sanjay Dubey,The practice of perfection, Tehelka, New Delhi, 14 July 2007.

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Arts In Motion

What do the following have in common? Read on….

Gonsalves, a retired school teacher at 76, has waltzed only on two brief occasions since her knee replacement surgery three years ago.

Bakshi, an engineer and arthritis patient, has been dragged to the floor for the first time by his daughter, who he’ll be dancing with.

Bhide, also arthritic, while having organized umpteen cultural functions for her residential complex, has never danced herself, till now.

Dhote joined the show’s training programme without intimating family, breaking the news to her husband only recently on a romantic weekend.

And Jain, for whom arthritis meant an end to her Bharatnatyam, squash and karate callings, has gotten her husband, a doctor, to join her in dance

Some pain is best alleviated via the simplest means. Haneef Hilal, model and famed dance choreographer (Jhalak Dikhla Ja is one of his cap feathers), directs the group as they sway and slide across the AIM studio floor. Hilal, Passionate about dancing, has seen his mother go through extreme pain because of a knee joint problem. Training people suffering from a physical disability for the show deals double edge to his passion. “The enthusiasm and determination these people have is amazing, even though most of them are first time dancers,” he observes. “We’ve chosen waltz because the steps are simple and don’t involve too much of exertion.” While the Gonsalves’ work on strict waltz solo, the others dance to a synchronized “Bollywood-cum-waltz improvisation”.

 ‘Recreational Sports’ is the name Dr Harish Bende, the orthopaedican who conducted Gonsalves’ knee replacement surgery, uses for activities like dancing, walking, tennis and badminton doubles and a 6.5 km per hour session on the treadmill. The purpose of these activities, post a physical disability, is “to boost one’s quality of life”, without risking life itself. Dance, besides being such a “recreational sport”, also serves as a form of expression beyond words, essential to patients who need more than words to express what they endure. “The most ecstatic reactions I remember were from patients who were told they could do the garba or dance on New Year’s and Christmas Eve,” Bende remembers. 

There are other reasons for this group’s ecstasy. One is the fact that they’ll be on stage. “It’s a challenge,” they claim collectively. Established professionals and service people in their own right, mental challenged are something they’re used to facing. But they feel their respective disabilities will have to be faced physically, before an audience, for a true test of triumph. “Also we’ll be telling many others to do the same,” Bhide adds.

They’ve also found dancing adding a strange quality to already established relationships. Be it Bakshi discovering another layer of understanding in the waltz with his daughter, or the Jains’ dance sessions transcending into a weekly “togetherness habit”. The classes occur during my one till date,” smiles Dr Jain.

Dhote laughs and remarks that while people are normally warned “don’t drink too much” before parties, she is constantly told to “stay away from the dance floor”. Family and friends in a bid to protect loved ones suffering from a physical ailment often cry hoarse at every movement that might further it as such, creating innumerable psychological ailments in turn. The group at the studio agrees that dancing for two to three hours at a stretch has often caused them a lot of pain. Their reaction to such, however, is best summed up in Chaya Jain’s words. “I tried to get back to kickboxing and there was pain. During household activities there is pain. But this pain? I’m loving it.”

Source: Dance @ Disability. Metro Now, Daily, New Delhi, 16 July 2007.

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