Gautam Lewis - Great Indian

कोलकाता में जन्मे गौतम को पैदा होते ही पोलियो ने अपना शिकार बना लिया। आज अपने मजबूत इरादों के दम पर आज न केवल हवाई जहाज उड़ा रहा है बल्कि फ्लाइंग इंस्ट्रक्टर भी बनना चाहता है।
ब्रिटेन में रह रहे गौतम ने एक सपना देखा था कि वे भी कभी आसमान की बुलंदियों को अपने हाथों से नापेंगे और बस यहीं से फ्लाइंग का विचार सच की शक्ल में उभरने लगा। उन्होंने हवाई जहाज उड़ाने का प्रशिक्षण लेना शुरू कर दिया। इससे पहले गौतम ने अपने हैंड कंट्रोल से कार चलाने में भी महारत हासिल कर रखी थी।
इस अनुभव ने हवाई जहाज को कंट्रोल करने में उनकी खासी मदद की। अपनी मेहनत और लगन के बल पर उन्होंने वह कर दिखाया जिसे लोग असंभव मान कर चल रहे थे। उन्होंने हवाई जहाज को उड़ाया और ऎसा करने वाले वे पहले निशक्त थे। इस काम को पूरा कर लेने के बाद उन्होंने अपने लिए नई चुनौतियां तय कर ली है। वे एक फ्लाइंग स्कूल खोलना चाहते हैं। फ्लाइंग इंस्ट्रक्टर बनना चाहते हैं। एक इंटरव्यू में गौतम कहते हैं कि मेरे पास पैर नहीं है लेकिन मैं कभी अपने रास्तों को खत्म नहीं होने देना चाहता। धैर्य और सकारात्मक सोच ही मेरी कामयाबी का राज रही है।

13 Questions: Gautam Lewis

by Ouch Team BBC.CO.UK

9th April 2009

Gautam Lewis was born in Kolkata, India, in 1977. At 3 years old, having contracted polio, he was abandoned to Mother Teresa’s orphanage where, aged 7 , he was adopted by a young British volunteer called Dr. Patricia Lewis and taken to live in the UK. Privately educated in the same schools as Prince Charles and Lily Allen, and with a degree from Southampton University, Gautam went on to have a very successful and colourful career in the music industry, managing The Libertines’ among others. But he became disillusioned with his work and decided to try something completely different.

Gautam uses his music management experience to run an events company, which raises the profiles of charities through concerts, and he has also set up Freedom in the Air, a unique flying school for disabled people in the UK, which aims to inspire and empower through aviation. Gautam works as an ambassador for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative too, and it was as part of this role that he made Passport from Polio with the Al Jazeera TV network, which charts his return to Kolkata to promote the immunisation of babies against polio. We found out more when we asked Gautam our 13 Questions.

Uppermost in my mind today is ...

Wondering what the global audience will make of Passport from Polio. I hope I have done justice to those children whose lives we are trying to save.

People think I'm ...

Difficult to pigeonhole. In the last 10 years I’ve run a nightclub, done photography, run businesses and managed bands, so employment agencies in particular find it hard to categorise me.

I want to ban ...

Nuclear weapons, unfairness, poverty and lack of basic education for so many people in the world.

The best piece of advice I would pass on is ...

Nothing is impossible. You just have to think differently about something in order to do it or understand it.

I struggle with ...

Finding girlfriends - and that's nothing to do with having a disability. A musician friend and I spend quite a bit of time talking about how two interesting guys like us can't find a girlfriend - what's wrong with us?!

I couldn't live without ...

The ability to fly aeroplanes. One of my strongest memories of the Mother Teresa orphanage is kite flying from the roof. I'd see the trails left by jet planes and I longed to feel the freedom of flying - no post-polio paralysis holding me back. I shall never forget the day I first saw an aeroplane and then flew in one as I left Kolkata. I qualified as a pilot in 2007, and when I’m in the cockpit at 5000ft that’s my happy place.

If I didn't live in the UK, I'd live in ...

New Zealand. I lived there for one and a half years after leaving Kolkata. It will always have a special place in my heart because it was like being in paradise.

My first job was ...

Running my nightclub, called Level 1, when I was at university in Southampton. Being in Southampton was like being in Groundhog Day - the clubs all played the same music. I started DJing myself, but in order to play different music I had to get my own club.

When I come home in the evenings, I ...

Switch on the computer, make some supper - I love to cook, especially for friends - and then catch up on BBC News 24 whilst checking emails and thinking about the next day's to-do list.

My favourite food is ...

Curry. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch and supper.

Polio is ...

A preventable disease. I was lucky to survive it in a time and place when 1 in 5 children were dying of it. Part of me thinks it’s brilliant that I had polio, because without it the rest of my life wouldn’t have happened. But I’ve had to work hard to be fit and, above all, independent.

'Passport from Polio' shows ...

The challenges of trying to eradicate the final cases of the condition. People find it hard to understand, but there is a reluctance in the Muslim community towards letting their children be vaccinated against certain preventable diseases - many believe the polio vaccine causes infertility.

During my visit to Kolkata, I ...

Was revisiting my own past, which I didn't really want to do because it was an unstable childhood full of heartache, in a place which provides life and not much else. I had nothing to prove, I know what my identity is now, but I did it to help the cause. I hope the film shows, through my own experience, that life doesn’t just stop because you have polio.

• Passport from Polio is a documentary film for Al Jazeera English’s Witness series, presented by Rageh Omaar. You can watch it online via the Freedom in the Air site.