Following his 16th surgery-a renal transplant-then 21-year-old Syam Kumar S.S., an amputee since age 8, confronted a fatal thought. "I told myself, 'I have already suffered a lot in life. It is enough," "he recalls. And then he had another thought-"What if I jump from a height?"
Jump he did, not to his death but to reach greater heights. Kumar, now 23, has two records to his name in the International Book of Records. A resident of Thiruvananthapuram's Kulathummal village, he is the youngest person in the world to skydive solo from an altitude of 13,000ft with a prosthetic leg and the youngest paragliding pilot with a prosthetic leg.
THE WEEK first met Kumar at KIMSHEALTH Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, where he had undergone a complicated kidney transplant two years ago. He had come in for a routine checkup wearing a fitted, full-sleeve T-shirt and convertible track pants that can be detached knee down, with the part of the pant below his amputated right leg detached. He wasn't wearing his prosthetic leg, prompting the hospital staff to offer him a wheelchair. "It is totally fine. I can walk. I can run kilometres on my lone leg,"he told the staff, before turning to this reporter with a wink. The puzzled staff, however, insisted on the wheelchair and Kumar accepted it with a smile.
I was born with one leg glued to my buttocks. | had plenty of other issues at birth, including a malformed renal system, aspinaltumour, and congenital scoliosis. |had my first surgeryjust 19 days after birth.
Syam Kumar S.S.
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Silent Screams Of Wayanad
Listen to the ground beneath your feet to figure out why heavy rain triggered a killer landslide
Have You Kept Track?
Now that the annual bloodletting is over and done with, and Caesar has extracted what was his due —and then a wee bit more—I can get back to worrying about my finances and sanity. While my perennially anaemic finances pose no problem, I frequently lose my temper because of the threatening messages that I receive, especially around the time of filing my income tax return.
Where is the hero?
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THE MAD, BAD NOMAD
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TUNE OF HER OWN
As she debuts as music composer, Khatija Rahman is determined to carve a path independent of her father's
I want to be like Bhaichung Bhutia; take Indian football to another level
Football has literally taken Lallianzuala Chhangte places. Born in Lunglei, a hilly town in Mizoram, around 160km from Aizawl, Chhangte was introduced to football by his grandfather.
JUNGLE LOOK
THE WEEK goes searching for spiders and geckos alongside wildlife researchers in Maharashtra’s Amboli forest
THE HILLS ARE BECOMING MORE AND MORE FRAGILE
ON JULY 31, a few hours after the Wayanad landslides, the Union government reissued a draft notification classifying parts of the Western Ghats in six states, including Kerala, as ecologically sensitive areas (ESAs).
Haryana has become the least safe state under BJP
Bhupinder Singh Hooda got the sobriquet ‘Ganga Putra’ after a narrow escape from death in 2003 when his car was swept away by the flooded river Pili in Haridwar.
Accountability of officers who arrest should be fixed
Sporting his trademark pink shirt, Manish Sisodia is his usual affable self. “Yes, I am here now,” says the former deputy chief minister of Delhi with a smile as he sits down for an exclusive interview with THE WEEK, referring to his long stint in jail.