Daring to be different

Shalini Saraswathi lost all her limbs to a rare infection, but she didn’t let that stop her from being Asia’s fastest woman on blades

- NIRMAL JOVIAL

SHALINI SARASWATHI cherishes hugs with all her heart. Nothing touches her more than when, after hearing her share her journey, someone from the audience steps forward, wraps her in a warm embrace, and with a teary smile, says they can now "go back and deal with their life".

Today, Shalini holds the Asian record of being the fastest woman on blades (T62 category). She is also a motivation speaker and the chief of strategy and implementation at Rise Bionics, a company that creates a range of assistive devices. Shalini lived her first three decades as an able-bodied person. But in 2012, when she was pregnant, life took a dramatic turn. Shalini was hit by a rare bacterial infection while vacationing in Cambodia, and that brought her dangerously close to death. "I was in coma and given a 3 per cent chance of survival. I vividly remember the doctors warning me that I might lose all my limbs, but at the time, it felt like an impossibility. You hold on to hope, thinking that something, some miracle, will intervene," she recalled at THE WEEK's Best Hospitals awards event.