Riyas emerges victorious over fate time and again

Kozhikode: Riyas does not want to think again of that unfortunate day. The only thing he remembers is that he was travelling back from Kozhikode with a friend on his bike and reached near Chengottukavu when he went unconscious.

The rest he can not recollect and when he gained consciousness, he was in a hospital bed. That was on March 19, 2003, and he was on his holiday from Bahrain to fix his marriage with a girl from the neighbourhood.

Riyas N.P., a fisherman from Thikkodi, became a paraplegic from then. Like many of his plight, he too confined to his bed for initial days, but he was not ready to surrender to the fate. His luck began, when a relative of his, Sabira, came forward to marry him.

“Mine is a joint family. Though jobless, the family took care of both of us. My fate changed and started dreaming again when the panchayat gave me a three-wheeler scooter,” says Riyas.

With that scooter, Riyas started his first business - taking orders of cotton waste from Tamil Nadu in bulk and selling them to the workshops.

He tied himself to the scooter and travelled around. From a palliative care camp, he came to know about NEST, Koyilandy, and the association of some NIT students in making special chairs for the paraplegics.

“The specially-designed chairs from NEST eased my way. They also offered me a job here, to run a DTP and photostat centre," he says.

“They told me about training for paraplegics in wheelchair basketball and badminton. I was selected to the Kerala team for wheelchair basketball and got training sessions at Rajagiri College, Kalamassery, and MA College, Kothamangalam.”

The team gets weekly training just two months before the tournaments and they lack sponsors. Amidst the shortcomings, Riyas’s team won bronze in the 16th senior National Para-Badminton Championship held at KL Mehta Dayanand Public School, Faridabad, from January 16 to 18.

They also won bronze in the wheelchair basketball championship held in Chennai in 2014.