3 Lessons to be learned from Manasi Joshi – BWF Para-Badminton Champion #WATWB

Even before PV Sindhu made headlines with her fantastic play and Gold medal in BWF World Championship, another sportsperson Manasi Joshi silently created the history in the BWF World Para-Badminton championships the previous day.

But unfortunately, Manasi Joshi has not got the limelight, she deserved from our Media. But with the advent of Social Media, Manasi became the overnight darling for most of them. And there are lot of lessons, one could learn from her story.

“I earned it. Worked every bit for it,” she tweeted on Tuesday.

 

Biography of Manasi Joshi

Manasi was born like every other normal kid and started playing Badminton during her school days. Though she played in various tournaments in state and national levels, Badminton was never her profession. She concentrated in her studies and completed her B.Tech degree from the Mumbai university. Her favorite subjects are Science and Computers. Manasi always dreamt of achieving something big in either of these fields. She got through campus placement and started working as a software Engineer in ATOS India company.

But then fate took her life and ambitions into its hand as Manasi met with a head-on collision with a heavy truck in 2011. Due to the medical complications that came up in her treatment, the doctors have decided to amputate her left leg. She had to stay back for around 50 days and returned back home with a prosthetic leg.

She has to start how to use her prosthetic leg and have to restart her walking exercises. In the meantime, she started working back again ATOS India. But being a sportsperson from her childhood, she was worried more about her fitness and her exercise routines. She was not sure, what can do with her prosthetic leg.

In the meantime, ATOS conducted a badminton tournament for its employees and Manasi has participated in that tournament though unwillingly at first, but have won it. Then that’s her turning point in life.  It was an eye opener for her of sorts, and she has decided to turn the Shuttle Badminton into her profession. She started playing the league matches.

Lessons I learned from Manasi Joshi:

Inner Strength:

Most of us, the common people would sit and cry when fate deals with a rough hand. All of us start dwelling in self-pity and self-doubts. In this whole process, we start losing ourselves. But Manasi is one person, who never wallowed in self-pity, but she became an example for many with her hard work and determination.

The way, she has accepted her disability and moved forward is highly motivational. Please listen to her TED talk here to understand more about her.

Determination to achieve something:

Once Manasi decided to play the badminton at a professional level, the road ahead was not easy for her. As the prosthetic leg that was fitted to her was only for walking purposes and not definitely for quick movements that are needed in the badminton courts.

Manasi had to sit with her medical doctor’s team and get her prosthetics changed as per her need. Also, she has to work hard to keep her body fit and healthy. She has to watch for her weight gain and improve the flexibility in all the muscles.

Since, Manasi has already made up her mind to acheive her gold in the para-badminton championships, all this hard work never stopped or bothered her.

Hard work:

Though she started participating in the para-badminton championships from 2013, her first entry into the international para-badminton championship matches happened only in 2015 in mixed doubles match. She grabbed a silver medal in 2015.

But she was not satisfied with her doubles game, as Manasi grew up watching and idolizing Steffi Graff, who used to rule the Tennis courts once upon a time. So Manasi started her taking part in the singles matches.

She joined under Gopichand Sir (same coach for PV Sindhu as well). She had a rigorous practice session with her coaches. They have created a special yet grueling training routines for her. Though she was not used to this hard work, she believes that this is what has made her stand against her tough competitor Parul.  She used to work in three sessions a day to stay fit and ahead in the game.

 

Knowing Manasi, she wouldn’t be stopping here itself. She would definitely scale higher peaks in her chosen profession. We wish all the very best to Manasi Joshi and salute her for commendable performance in this year’s women’s singles SL3 final of the BWF para-badminton championship.

Manasi Joshi is a true inspiration for today’s kids who are in real search of true heros, apart from the television and movies in the real life.

This post is part of the We Are the World Blogfest, a monthly blogging event created by Damyanti Biswas and Belinda Witzenhausen to showcase stories of hope and light.

“We Are the World Blogfest” which seeks to promote positive news. Sharing these stories that show compassion and the resilience of the human spirit increases our awareness of hope in our increasingly dark world. My cohosts for this month are:  Shilpa Garg,Simon Falk , Damyanti Biswas, Lizbeth Hartz and Eric Lahti.

To check more such positive stories, please click here.