Medical science considers Chirag Chouhan a paraplegic. The media calls him a terror victim. For others who know him, he is a successful chartered accountant who employs a dozen people.
It has been a decade since a blast at the Khar Road railway station in Mumbai crippled Chouhan. But he did not let the tragedy bog him down. “I do not want to be viewed or rated as someone with special ability; I am what I am, competing with others on equal footing,” he said, sitting in his office on Link Road in Kandivali West. He has got his car customised so that it can be driven by hands alone. “I have gone as far as Lonawala with friends. The car has helped me forget my mobility issue.”
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Things were not that easy in the beginning. “Initially it was the feeling of devastation, but later I trained myself through a rigorous physiotherapy regime and focused on my CA exam. It was in July 2008 that I cleared the test,” he said. He had to turn down many good job offers owing to his mobility issues. He joined Deloitte India after two months and later moved to Kotak Mahindra.
In April 2012, Chouhan started his own firm. Last year, he even set up a startup, expertmile.com, which has a database and a system to connect chartered accountants, tax consultants, lawyers and company secretaries in Mumbai. “This business has huge prospects, and I am looking for investors to scale up the whole ecosystem,” he said.
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Chouhan, 31, lost his father a few years ago and now lives with his mother. Though born a Hindu, he follows the Japanese faith Sukyo Mahikari. “It is not that I follow one particular religion,” he said. “Hindu temples have issues of accessibility while this Japanese place in Kandivali East is accessible for people with disability.”
