While most youngsters ditch voting over long weekend, meet 53-year-old Vikram Agnihotri from Indore, who voted with his toe. Vivek, who lost his hands to electrocution when he was barely 7, pressed the EVM with his feet to cast his vote. We spoke to the Indore-based Vikram Agnihotri to find out more about his inspirational story.
Day in and day out, we hear people talking about their insurmountable problems. The moment one grapples with it, the problem may appear complex and difficult because you are fighting the situation. But if you accept it, according to Vikram Agnihotri, the issue becomes manageable.
Vikram is a 53-year-old man from Indore. He had met with an electrical accident when he was less than seven years old which led to amputation of both his upper limbs. Though the system prefers to call him a differently-abled person, Vikram insists that he is in no manner different from anyone as he could write, drive and swim as any other person could.
“My parents used to say that if you accept yourself, the world will be okay. If you don't accept yourselves and you're not comfortable with yourselves, how do you expect others to feel comfortable in your company? So this made me actually go and tell people what had happened to me. Instead of trying to hide it, I would start with what had happened to me. And that was enough. After that nobody will even bother to ask anything,” he said explaining how handled the situation after the accident..
Stating that if parents lose hope it will collapse children, he said his parents ensured that there was no melodrama, no crying or talking about how my future is finished in front of me. “So I actually never felt, as I said, awkward or different because of the environment that was created around me.”
His parents, he said, brought him up as normal as possible. “My parents insisted that I would go only to a regular school and not a special school. Because they want the whole rehabilitation process to be based on me being a normal person. So I started writing, I started swimming, I was playing football and skating with the kids in my society. I was like, just part of the gang. I was not given any special status, which in fact ended up giving me the recognition that I got now. But my aim was not to prove anything to anyone. It's like I'm just going about doing things my way.”
How did he deal with the situation? “Sometimes,” Vikram says, “not focusing a lot on the problem would help us to pass it. Instead of focusing on what you don't have, it is better to think about what you have because it will make you realise you have enough, in fact, you have more than enough.”
Vikram has the distinction of being the first Indian bilateral amputee to be issued a permanent driving licence for driving a four-wheeler, a feat worthy of an entry in the Limca Book of Records 2017-2018 edition.
However, he had to struggle for two years to overcome officials’ ignorance towards the needs of the differently-abled people. But he finally not only got himself the licence but also got the Motor Vehicle Act amended, opening the door for millions of differently-abled Indians aspiring for a driving licence. Subsequently he has participated in three motor sport events including the iconic Desert Storm 2018.
Vikram completed his school graduation from Bonn American High School, Bonn, West Germany, in 1985 at the age of 15 years. only. He was awarded the Presidential Academic Fitness Award personally signed by the then US President Ronald Reagan for academic excellence. He is a graduate in commerce and post-graduate in economics, from Indore Christian College, Indore.
Vikram feels that there is no age bar for learning and as long as you keep educating yourself, you will remain young. In 2014, at the age of 44, he enrolled for the LLB Hons. programme and successfully concluded it in July 2017. He is currently working on his PhD thesis on the subject of disability.
He also owned and managed a non-banking finance company, a knitwear-2-stitching factory producing export quality knitwear and an Ingot casting mini steel plant.
