Standing 3 ft 7 inches in his socks, Delhi-based Anubhav Sawhney (21) recently earned a black belt in taekwondo — a highly disciplined martial art form known to have originated in Korea — in a national test staged in Rohtang Pass, Himachal Pradesh. Determined to disprove ill-informed popular prejudices against height challenged (aka stunted) individuals, this 21-year-old first year B.Pharm student of the Innovative College of Pharmacy, Greater Noida, born with degenerative Micro Syndrome — a genetic disorder defined by knock knees, stunted growth and ocular atrophy among other skeletal abnormalities — has nevertheless emerged as a formidable taekwondo exponent.

The only child of Bhushan Sawhney, vice president of a reputed Delhi-based company Polycab Wires Pvt. Ltd, and homemaker Monika, Anubhav, who started school three years later than normal children, got hooked on taekwondo at age ten while a primary student at Rabindranath World School (RWS), Gurgaon. “I used to watch other children practice taekwondo and yearned to join them. But sports teachers discouraged me saying I wasn’t physically equipped for the sport,” he recalls.

However in 2009, when Jahangir Raza was appointed taekwondo coach at RWS, Anubhav’s enthusiasm caught his attention and he encouraged him to take to the sport. After two years of rigorous training, Anubhav won his first gold medal at the Delhi State Taekwondo Championship, 2006. Over the next eight years, he won six golds in Delhi tournaments in the under-40 kg category, and the sub-junior national tournament in 2014. Topping all this was his eighth gold medal in 2015 at the South Asian Championship in Rohtang Pass.

Anubhav attributes his remarkable prowess in taekwondo and emotional strength to the empathetic counseling he has received from Heema Sharma, principal of Greater Noida’s JP International School, where he had enrolled for his Plus Two in 2014. “Two years ago when I entered her office, I was in my father’s strong arms. But her words of encouragement and motivation have had such an effect on me that I have never had to be carried again in public,” says Anubhav.

“After I complete my B.Pharm degree, I plan to start a pharmaceuticals business and a gymnasium-cum-martial arts training facility,” adds this never-say-die martial arts champion, whose life is a profile of courage.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)