When 20-year-old Pratishtha Deveshwar was invited to join six other students from around the country to meet a "senior Congress leader" over dinner, she had little idea that it would turn out to be party chief Rahul Gandhi himself. "I got a call from the Congress office and they told me we were going to meet a senior Congress leader and we'll have to discuss important issues with them, raise our concerns... but we were not told we were going to meet Mr Gandhi. But we saw a lot of security, media so we knew we were going to meet someone important," Pratishtha told NDTV.

We walked the road with Pratishtha, disability rights activist. She showed us the barriers faced on the road with people with traveling difficulties and shed light on road safety. #InternationalDayofPersonsWithDisabilities #WorldDisabilityDay

Her life changed in a single moment. A normal 13-year-old girl — ambitious, bright, confident — suddenly woke up in an ICU bed with no idea what had happened to her. A spinal cord injury she didn’t even know existed had taken away her ability to walk. But it couldn’t take away her spirit. In this deeply personal and powerful conversation, Pratishtha opens up about the moment she saw her brother lying on a stretcher beside her… the moment she saw her father cry for the first time… and the moment she realized life wasn’t going to be the same again. For five long years, she stayed inside a single room — homeschooled, dependent on her parents for every small thing, from bathing to getting dressed. She felt like a burden. She felt forgotten. She felt stuck. But even then, she held on to one thing: hope. And that hope led her to dream bigger, work harder, and fight her way back into the world. From learning how to navigate life independently to moving to Delhi alone… from teaching herself daily tasks to facing the world’s judgment… from falling off her wheelchair in the middle of the road to finally asking for help — every part of her journey shaped the unstoppable woman she is today. And then came the moment she never imagined: She opened her email and saw her acceptance letter from Oxford University.

Pratishtha did not let an accident at the age of 13, that left her paralysed chest-down, stop her from living life on her own terms. She lives independently in Delhi and heads the Equal Opportunity Cell at Lady Shri Ram College. She has played a big role in making the campus accessible and plans on taking her work beyond college.

Ms. Pratishtha Deveshwar, is not the one to have lived an average life. She talks about the journey from a road accident that left her paralysed from chest-down at the age of thirteen, to making history by becoming the first ever wheelchair user from India to study at the prestigious University of Oxford. She is all about making the impossible to I AM POSSIBLE and treads on the path from being the victim to being the victor. Pratishtha Deveshwar is the first Indian wheelchair-user to study at the University of Oxford.A native of Punjab in India, she is currently pursuing Masters in Public Policy at Oxford. She is the elected House Chair of Somerville College at Oxford and is one of the top 50 postgraduates selected for the Oxford Global Leadership Initiative by the Oxford Character Project. She is a public speaker and has been a powerful young voice heard across the world, at various national and international platforms. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx