A dedicated wife, mother, sportsperson & teacher

Deepankar Sharda

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 29

It was a proud moment for 32 year-old Poonam, the only paralympic athlete among 550-odd sportspersons, to get the highest cash prize of Rs 2 lakh at a function organised by the Directorate of Sports, Panjab University, on Saturday.

A third year (last semester) student of LLB at the Department of Laws, PU, she won a gold medal while representing the PU in Paralympic World Cup Table Tennis Championship in Slovakia. Not only this, she has also represented India in three different paralympic Asian table tennis championships held across Asia. She has also won 14 medals at the national level and six medals (both singles and doubles) at various international-level championships.

Happy to get the honour, Poonman said “It’s been a great honour to get recognition. I never made this artificial leg a reason to sit back at home. My husband showed me the way and helped me prove my mettle. We always wanted to be a role model for our child, so that he could fight bravely in worst situations”.

She always faced situations where she had to prove herself, and she did that gracefully. She is a proud mother of five-year-old boy, Yajat Kumar. Her life changed in 2009 when she got married to Mukesh Kumar, a paralympic international table tennis player. Her husband, who was conferred a national gallantry award in 2003 for saving a child’s life from railway track in Haryana ( Bhiwani), motivated her to play table tennis. Before pursuing LLB, she did MA (Hindi) and postgraduate diploma in human rights from Panjab University.

Poonam began playing in 2009, after her marriage, at the table tennis hall of Sector 23. In no time, she played her first international championship in 2011 and won a gold medal In Thailand. Thereafter, she played international Asian paralympics championships in 2013, 2014 and recently the world championship. She also has the honour to be the first woman to win a gold medal in the international paralympics championship.

She said, “Before she took to table tennis, her future was uncertain. I feared what I would do in life as I was a handicap. After I got proper guidance from my husband, I began believing in myself.”