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I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination”, a quote by Jimmy Dean, seems to be the mantra of a 25-year-old specially-abled girl belonging to north Kashmir’s Baramulla district.
The young village girl, Ishrat Rasheed, belonging to Bangdara, who already has inspired scores of people over the time for exhibiting her sheer grit and dedication for the game has represented India at the international level and thus happens to be the first specially-abled International basketball player of J&K.
Ishrat is set to represent the country for one more time in the international Wheelchair basketball championship scheduled to be held in India next month.
Ishrat, who otherwise was all well and healthy, fell from the second floor of her house in 2016, causing grievous injuries to spinal cord, leaving her paralyzed below the waist for the rest of her life.
Narrating her ordeal, Ishrat says she was unable to accept this reality and nobody would have thought at that stage that I would ever be able to reach an international stage and represent India in wheelchair basketball.
“During the first six months, when I was bed-ridden and wheelchair-bound, I got very much depressed. However, one day my father took me to the Medicare Society where disability was a normal thing,” she said. “I somehow understood that there were hundreds of people like me in the world and that changed my perception and I came out of my depression.”
At the Medicare Society, Ishrat said she saw a few boys confined to wheelchairs playing basketball and it inspired confidence in her to play as well.
“I was selected for the first national during a camp at the Indoor stadium and represented India in 2019. Now, I have been selected during trials held at Srinagar to represent India in the International Wheelchair Basketball Tournament in Noida from November 6 -11.”
“It gives me immense pleasure and satisfaction that I have been selected for the International Championship one more time and I am pretty optimistic to leave a mark with my performance this time around”, says Ishrat.
