Kamal Ghorui
KOLKATA: “Sheetal and I are friends off the field, but once we spot the target and take aim…”Three days after dominating the World Archery Para Series event and beating Sheetal Devi for the individual compound gold in Bangkok, Payal Nag trails off when describing the moment. “We have a fierce competitive mindset when playing against each other,” she revealed to TOI on Tuesday.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!The 18-year-old had already beaten Sheetal for gold earlier — at the Paralympic Nationals in January 2025 — and had stretched her to the limit in the Khelo India Para Games and at the National Championships earlier this year, where she won a silver and a bronze.At the Thailand event, Payal partnered Sheetal in the team event and together, the girls displayed uncommon determination and skill to win women’s gold on Friday. The daughter of a dailywage labourer, 8-year-old Payal was playing with her brother when she stepped on a naked wire lying in a puddle of water at a nearby construction site. The Class III girl was critically injured, leaving the doctors with no option but to amputate all her four limbs to save her life.With little means to care for a quadruple amputee, her parents Bijay and Janata were advised by the then district collector of Bolangir in Odisha to send Payal to an orphanage, the Parbati Giri Bal Niketan in their home district. Relatives and neighbours had other suggestions to swiftly put her out of her misery — to end her life. “She won’t be able to eat or walk, better to just give her some poison,” they said.Bijay and Janata were made of sterner stuff. And today, just ten years after that accident, things have turned a full circle for their daughter — Payal being the only limbless archer to compete on the international stage. “When people made those remarks, I was still young but I remember them clearly. It was tough, but now when I look back on those very words, I feel a mix of emotions — it’s both painful and gratifying,” Payal revealed.“I feel grateful to those who spoke against me; it was precisely because they said those things that I was able to summon the courage to push forward and reach such great heights.”Payal was grateful to her coach Vedwan who was drawn to a painting by the girl, having taken to art at the orphanage. Vedwan came across the painting posted on ‘X’, and in 2023, brought her to the Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board Sports Complex in Jammu and introduced her to a new chapter in life.Vedwan developed a customised bow for her with an identical release mechanism that he had devised for Sheetal. Payal could lift the special bow with prosthetic legs fitted with a steel device along with the chest release mechanism. Arrows have to be loaded by someone else, in Payal’s case her 20-yearold sister Barsa who stays with her in Jammu. “I didn’t know anything about archery and took two years to master the skills,” she explained.There has been no looking back for the archer who is now concentrating on winning India a gold at the Asian Games and at the Paralympics. “My parents are incredibly happy right now. They called me to come back home to Odisha, but I have decided not to go just yet. That’s because I want to win another international medal. Since I have specific training requirements to meet, I am staying back in Jammu for now. I just want to go out there and win again,” Payal declared.
