Prasanta Karmakar is a swimmer from India.!
Read and download papers by Prasanta Karmakar on OA.mg.
From despair to triumph: The tale of Prasanta Karmakar
A seven-year-old son of a taxi driver loses his right hand in a road accident — triggering a life of uncertainty, leaving his parents’ hopes in limbo and giving way to a roller coaster chain of events that would change the face of Indian sport.
Twenty six years after that fateful day, Prasanta Karmakar chuckles about it before revealing his disarmingly innocent feelings about the tragedy, “I felt it would grow back, finger after finger… you know how you cut your nails and they grow back?
Just like that.”
That kid is now 33, and is the first disabled Indian swimmer to win a medal at the World Swimming Championships (2003) and the Commonwealth Games (2010) – gathering more than a dozen medals throughout his career.
He is also the Asian record holder in Butterfly, Breaststroke and Backstroke (all 50m).
And recently, he shifted to cycling and continued his glorious run, winning two golds in the Asian