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MEENA MENON / The Hindu / MUMBAI, July 10, 2011.
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: Chiraj Chouhan, 25, who rebuilt his life after suffering a special cord injury in the serial train blast on July 11, 2006. Photo: Special Arrangement - The Hindu.
When 25-year-old Chirag Chauhan looks back over the last five years that changed his life, many emotions come to his mind. “It seems like a long journey,” he told The Hindu on the phone. Mr. Chauhan was among the survivors of the serial train blasts on July 11, 2006 which claimed over 180 lives. That day he had left for home early when a bomb exploded in the suburban local at Khar Road station. His spinal cord was damaged due to the explosion and some particles are still embedded in his chest and close to the trachea.
Mr. Chauhan, who dreamt of becoming a chartered accountant (CA), was doing his articleship then. He has made an amazing recovery. Wheelchair-bound now, he is a full-fledged CA working as a senior manager in the internal audit division of a private bank for one and a half years. He even drives the 20 minutes to his office in a specially designed car with a dual system which can be operated with his hands. He has little time for hobbies but could not resist driving to Lonavla, a hill station outside Mumbai, recently. “I wanted to see how far I could drive and it was a test for me,” he said. It was a fun trip with his friends.
Immediately after the terror strike, Mr. Chauhan, like many others, spent long months in hospital; but he maintains he was optimistic from the start. In an emailed statement to all those who have kept in touch with him and followed his case, he quotes Winston Churchill, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Despite his debilitating injures, he pressed on with his course and completed it on July 12, 2008. “To continue where others thought “It is impossible” — that's one thing I dared to do,” he says. He lost his father when he was 18 and was faced with the prospect of looking after his sisters and mother, something he can proudly do now.
Mr. Chauhan considered himself an average student and it was only in the tenth standard final examination that he managed a first class. His determination to do his CA led him to do his articleship and things were going well. “July 11, 2006, was a day like any other day for the rest of the world. I went to work in the morning and caught an early train back home as my work was over. I never thought in my wildest dreams that it would be my last train journey,” he says.
Its one thing to fall prey to an unsuspecting terroristic trauma but to recover from it and the physical trauma as well to continue to pursue one's life's dream and to achieve it is another thing!
Double Kudos to Chirag!!
Full Story at,
