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mohammad

mohammad
shams
aalam
shaikh , haryana

Mohammad Shams Aalam Shaikh is exercising on a yellow yoga mat, lying on his stomach. Wearing a blue T-shirt and black track pants, he has raised his head and chest. Both arms are extended. His hands, holding a roller, rest on the ground. Both knees are bent backwards and his 90-year-old father is sitting down behind him and holding up his feet. On the ground to their left are a steel flask and a wheelchair.
Shams sits in his wheelchair in the front room of his house. He has a close-cropped beard and moustache. Light falls on him from the open front door. In one hand he holds a book which he is reading and in the other, a palm-leaf hand fan with a wooden handle. He wears a white T-shirt with an orange collar, dark brown trousers and blue sneakers.
Shams sits in his wheelchair just outside his front door which opens out to a kachcha road. He wears a blue and grey checked lungi and a T-shirt with horizontal stripes in three different shades of grey. A vegetable bicycle cart is parked just outside the door and Shams is smiling and saying something to the vendor. The vendor has his back to us and he wears a full-sleeve cotton shirt with an indigo-blue and mustard-yellow design.
Shams sits in his wheelchair in a corner of his kitchen. A white plate is balanced on his lap. He is cutting a green vegetable with a small knife. The kitchen wall has white tiles. The platform is made of brown marble and there are matching brown kitchen cabinets and drawers. On the platform are some vessels and a gas stove with a kadai on the burner.
Shams is smiling as he sits cross legged on his bed next to his father Mohammad Nasir (90). Nasir has a full white beard and wears a white kurta-pyjama and white cap. He has one leg folded at the knee resting on the bed, and the other leg dangling to the ground. Shams wears a red T-shirt and black pants.
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“Time is the best medicine”

Imagine you’re a karate champion winning medals for India. Just before a major event, a surgery leaves you with chest-down paralysis. Mohammad Shams Aalam Shaikh (35) entered the same dark tunnel that you’ve just imagined, but with time he emerged at the other end as a swimming champion, winning medals once again.
 
Shams was born in Rathos village in Bihar’s Madhubani district. In his family of eight, his father Mohammad Nasir, who had finished secondary school, was the most highly educated. Shams was six when he joined school in Byculla, Mumbai where two of his older brothers ran a leather goods business. He went on to secure an engineering diploma and later a B.E.
 
Shams had always been the sporty type. In Mumbai he wanted to learn the martial art form Kalaripayattu but found no one to teach it. He considered becoming a wrestler like his grandfather, and finally settled on karate. In this he excelled, earning a black belt and reaping over 50 medals at the state, national and international levels.
 
He was getting ready for the 2010 Asian Games when he was diagnosed with a tumour in his back. The consulting doctor sounded optimistic: “You’ll need a surgery but you’ll quickly recover in time to qualify for the Games.” Shams recalls: “I believed the doctor’s words. I had the same faith in him as I have in the Almighty.” But the surgery didn’t go well and he acquired paraplegia.
 
For two years he suffered intense disappointment and frustration. His friends from college and the karate community and his family, particularly his sister and mother (who is no more), were pillars of support. During a rehabilitation session at the Paraplegic Foundation, he met two reputed para-sportsmen: Rajaram Ghag, who had swum across the English Channel, and Satyaprakash Tiwari, a badminton and TT player. The encounter opened his eyes to possibilities. Sport was in his blood, after all.
 
From karate strikes to swimming strokes — Shams won numerous accolades, including breaking the world record for the longest distance of open-sea swimming by a paraplegic. But trophies and Paralympic dreams are not his sole preoccupations. As a motivational speaker, he spreads awareness on accessibility for PwDs. He has played a key role in setting up district level para sports associations in Mumbai. Chosen for the Global Sports Mentorship Program 2018, organised by the US State Department in association with University of Tennessee, he presented his vision of creating an accessible India through sports.
 
After Shams moved to Gurugram, Haryana in 2019, he started working with a company to produce customised affordable wheelchairs. He lives with his father who, though nearly 90, does yoga, is fighting fit, and helps him with his physio exercises.


Photos:

Vicky Roy

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