Pune: Life followed a simple, rhythmic pattern for Aman, a student at a govt school in Mumbai. Every afternoon after school, he would walk straight to his mother’s fruit cart. His mother worked as a street vendor, earning just enough to keep their small household running. Aman would sit beside her, helping arrange the fruits and excitedly recounting his day. It was an ordinary life — quiet, honest, and full of warmth.Until everything changed one afternoon when Aman was 14. His mother had stepped away to fetch lunch from home, leaving him alone at the cart. In a region where the weather can shift from stifling heat to violent storms in an instant, a sudden gale struck without warning. Strong winds uprooted a nearby tree, which came crashing down on the boy and the fruit cart.Aman was rushed to the hospital with severe injuries. His spinal nerves were irreparably damaged. In a single, shattering moment, his ability to walk was taken away. What followed was more than physical immobility; it was a deep emotional collapse. For the next eight years, Aman barely spoke. Losing his mobility during his most formative years altered how he saw the world — and how the world looked back at him. Every movement felt like a burden, but the shift in people’s eyes was even more painful. He saw only sympathy, pity, and quiet judgment. Unable to bear that gaze, Aman withdrew into himself. When friends or relatives visited, he shut himself in his room. Silence became his only refuge.Stories like Aman’s deeply moved the leadership at a non-profit organisation, IGF-India, particularly Sundeep Talwar. They refused to accept a manual wheelchair as the only solution, recognising the physical and psychological limits it imposed on young lives.They knew there were over 11 million people across India struggling in the dark corners of their homes for the same reason. For these individuals, mobility isn’t just about movement; it is about dignity, choice, and the right to live independently.Driven by this mission, Talwar and the IGF-India team collaborated with an IIT Madras–incubated startup to bring a visionary idea to life: a wheelchair that could navigate Indian roads like a scooter. This partnership birthed the ‘NeMo programme’— a motorised attachment that transforms a manual wheelchair into a road-ready mobility solution. It was designed not just to restore movement, but to restore equality.When the IGF-India team identified Aman —now in his early twenties — and brought him in for training, something remarkable happened. For the first time in years, he was surrounded by people who shared his journey. No one looked at him with pity; no one treated him as an exception. He was simply seen as an equal. Watching others navigate life independently gave him a spark of courage. Slowly, he began to speak again. Confidence returned, word by word.On the fifth day of the programme, during the distribution of the motorised wheelchairs, Sundeep Talwar and his colleagues — Ravi, Sumana, and Shikha — witnessed the impact of their work firsthand. Aman’s mother stood nearby, watching her son smile, talk, and engage freely — a sight she had not seen in nearly a decade. Overwhelmed, she touched Talwar’s feet and broke down in tears. She thanked the NGO team, admitting she never imagined Aman would live with such hope again. Since 2021, the NGO has transformed thousands of lives by providing motorised wheelchairs, up-skilling, livelihood support, and financial aid for surgeries.Today, many who were once confined to their homes are now working as food delivery partners with platforms like Zomato and Swiggy, or as tele-callers, data interpreters, and small entrepreneurs. They are no longer recipients of charity; they are active contributors to society. As Talwar said, “We are not giving support. We are giving freedom — the freedom to think, to earn, to live independently, and to be seen without sympathy.” Aman’s is just one story. There are hundreds more. Together, they tell the story of lives changed not by pity, but by possibilities.
