As part of his rehabilitation, he took to gym training and was very soon an excellent weightlifter. He represented Sweden in the Bench Press event at the paraplegic Olympics in Atlanta and surprised everyone by winning the gold medal, setting a record not just for the disabled but also for the ‘normal’ Olympics. The environment in Sweden helped and soon the accident in 1983 was a distant memory. Arun was a charged man. For him ‘active rehabilitation’ became a mantra and he was determined to bring his experience in Sweden to help spread its benefits in India.

He started making frequent trips to India and working with institutions to improve the quality of wheelchairs so that paraplegics could be more pro-active with their wheelchairs. He worked on training the bodies of those injured — irrespective of their family backgrounds. His goal is to make the disabled re-discover their inner strength so as to learn to be completely independent again.

The writer is a filmmaker. His last film was ‘Manipur Song’