Divyanshu Ganatra can’t neglect that morning. About decades in the past, whilst he stirred from his sleep, he realized he had lost his sight.
Two years before that morning, a medical doctor had knowledgeable Ganatra that his eyes have been steadily degenerating due to glaucoma, and there has been no cure for it. It didn’t mean a whole lot then, for Ganatra ought to see just best. But now, the warning had come actual.
“I changed into total denial until then. Of course, I had skilled a gradual deterioration of my eyesight over the years, but the first-rate part of my vision sincerely disappeared overnight,” Ganatra, 42, says.
While growing up in Pune, Ganatra loved being in the midst of nature. From cycling to swimming and wandering the Sahyadri hills, he constantly becomes in awe of his environment. “I wanted to climb mountains and paint. That’s what I saw myself doing. But I became now a blind teenager, and for the following couple of months, I went thru several emotions, from anger to melancholy,” he recollects.
It took a huge attempt on his element to move slowly out of his state of thoughts regularly. He soon set his thoughts on gaining knowledge of computers, and his first activity turned into inside the discipline of communications and the Web era. While programming machines, he started out studying approximately the human brain. The fascination became enough to cease a successful career and return to college to study intellectual fitness.
After a degree in psychology and cognitive neuroscience and a master’s degree in scientific psychology from Fergusson College in Pune, he worked with a corporate business enterprise. The task didn’t last lengthy. Ganatra discovered the paintings unchallengingly, but it gave him a flavor of his past love once more. “During that stint, I assume most people remember me for the main treks for the personnel. I know the Sahyadris just like the back of my hand. It made me realize that it became something I still loved,” he says.
In 2006, the installation Yellow Brick Road, which works within the field of high-quality psychology and behavioral facilitation. “I paintings with corporates and individuals. It’s what places bread at the table,” he says.
The road in advance What genuinely invigorated him for the duration of that point was his maiden paragliding flight that he had pulled off in Kamshet. It pushed him to realize a lifelong dream. In 2014, he based the Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation (ABBF).
“Ever when you consider that I can recollect, I wanted to fly. It’s nonsecular; you’re inside the second. It’s such as you stay one million years in that one unmarried second, just insanely stunning,” he says. “I concept play changed into a terrific way to get the two groups—humans with and without disabilities—to engage and set up a connect, and shatter all stereotypes associated with disabilities inside the manner.”
Since ABBF’s inception, Ganatra has worked toward introducing them differently to outside activities along with biking, jogging, trekking, paragliding, and scuba diving. One of the hardest motorcycles rides he’s taken on is from Manali to Khardung La, a distance of over 500km. He’s also hiked to the Everest base camp and became part of a crew that covered three blind climbers, climbing Kilimanjaro, the best mountain in Africa, final year. Over the beyond 5 years, ABBF has reached out to around five 900 otherwise abled outside enthusiasts via their sports. “The global lacks empathy on the whole. The paintings I do through ABBF is certainly an extension of psychology—to get humans to look at matters with a different mindset,” he says.
Ganatra makes most of his cash thru Yellow Brick Road. ABBF runs mostly on donations and fundraising, which has been a consistent mission.
“Sport in our united states of America gets the least funding, disability some distance lesser. There’s no point out of it in the corporate social responsibility of agencies both. As a result, we’ve had to paintings with character donations so far,” he says.
In the years beforehand, Ganatra desires to attention at the 80 according to cent of the in a different way abled populations who have in no way stepped out of their house and make them discover all of the things which have changed his life. “If you appearance lower back a hundred years or so, it turned into no longer every day for daughters to be sent to school. Today, it’s enjoyable. What modified was people’s beliefs, which doesn’t show up in a flash. I want to continue operating in the direction of the inclusion of the disabled in the mainstream inside the time to come back,” he adds.
