Misery to history: Bhavina Patel’s challenging journey to glory – In Pics

It was at the Blind People's Association, Ahmedabad that her life underwent another change. She was introduced to coach Lalah Doshi and she soon transformed into a table tennis player, starting a journey that has taken her to the Tokyo Paralympics and a place in Indian sports history.

Confined to a wheelchair since a young age, Bhavana studied in regular schools in Sundhiya village. In 2004 her father got her enrolled in the Blind People's Association, Ahmadabad, where she did a course in computers and also pursued her graduation via correspondence.

Coming from a middle-class background, her father could not get her treated when she was young. Though he had to take care of a family of five, he managed to get Bhavana operated upon at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh but the surgery did not yield desired results as Bhavana was careless and did not follow the rehab procedure properly.

Bhavana was not so dedicated and hard-working initially. Born on November 6, 1986, at Sundhiya village, Vadnagar, in Mehsana district of Gujarat, she got infected by poliomyelitis when she was 12 months old. 

Having taken up table tennis around 2004 to maintain fitness, the sport became Bhavina's passion. After three years of hard work and practice, she won her first national title in Para Table Tennis Nationals in Bangalore in 2007 and that set her on a course that has taken her to the Tokyo 2020 and a place in India's Paralympic Games history as the first table tennis player to win a medal.