These former special forces deep dived to make adventure sports accessible to all. CLAW_Global
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00:00So on land, they're bound by gravity, they can just, you know, probably roll forward
00:09or backward on their wheelchairs.
00:14In water, they're free.
00:21You know, everything around, you know, India, when you travel, otherwise also, it's very
00:26inaccessible for people with disabilities.
00:28There are a lot of barriers.
00:29The moment you are in the sea, it's accessible, there's no barriers there.
00:34When you are on the shores, you can walk in the water, okay, otherwise I can't walk.
00:44If a team of disabilities can be trained by us, right, if we train them, we can break
00:50three world records in land, sea and air.
00:53Ninety-nine percent of the people in this world have not done what these guys, we will
00:58help these guys to do.
01:23Till now, people with disabilities are perceived as vessels of pity, you know, give them some
01:32money or some, you know, something like that.
01:34They're treated with pity and given handouts.
01:38What people don't understand is what these guys are capable of.
01:41If they can go and scuba dive in the open sea, they can jump off a bloody plane and
01:44they can climb Mount Everest, they can bloody well sit in a job and, you know, get employed.
01:53I volunteered for the special forces, like the Navy SEALs are there in the United States.
02:00We are the Navy SEALs of India.
02:02We go kill the bad guys.
02:06We train in certain very specialized skills like combat skydiving, combat underwater diving,
02:13military mountaineering.
02:14And during one of my, one of these combat freefall, I had an accident, my parachute
02:21kind of wrapped up around my leg in mid freefall and I had a bad accident.
02:26I managed to get out alive, but I had a spinal cord injury.
02:41So, he came up to me and he said, sir, you are a commando, shamando and all, so you must
02:48be doing scuba diving.
02:49So, I said, yeah, I do scuba diving, yes.
02:52So, he said, sir, can a person like me also do scuba diving?
02:56So, I thought there must be so many people like him.
02:59Somebody who wants to do scuba diving, somebody who wants to do skydiving, somebody who wants
03:03to climb a mountain and things like that.
03:04So, it all just started coming together later on and this, it just captured me so much.
03:11I resigned from the army and I just wanted to do this and nothing else.
03:19But it's not like a, you know, like a, like a, like a inspiration poem.
03:50There's a fine line between that, but one is very cautious about what you are saying
03:54and how you do it and how you are able to keep in mind the dignity of the person.
04:01They are not trying to portray disability as something one should feel sorry about.
04:08It is trying to show that, you know, disabled people are also one of us.
04:14They also have the right to be part of an adventure activity or a leisure activity.
04:20And because there is a will, because some people thought that we can do it for people
04:24who are in a disadvantaged position in our society.
04:27This message that if we all get together and we do our bit, no one will be left behind.