It is with a great deal of fondness that she recalls that moment. “I remember that day very clearly, because prior to that I used to fall easily because my legs were extremely weak.” At age 7 she attended the Sacred Heart Convent High School in Lyallpur, an institution where the Nuns were extremely supporting, even putting in place a special commode for the child. She recalls having danced at a concert in spite of her obvious handicap. Her parents constantly pushed her into raising her game, no obvious sympathies were shown, or handicaps granted, because of her affliction. It helped her become more determined to pursue her dreams, much like what the Berlin Olympics hero Jesse Ownes once said, “we all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.”

EDUCATING DEEPI

Post partition, her family moved to Jalandhar, and life changed. She was now attending a regular Government school, starved of funds, and with peers who were not as well groomed as those in her school in Lyallpur. They would often laugh at her discomfiture, and make open fun. While it did make her dejected, it did not break her will. “When I look back today, I think everything happened for the best, it all had a reason,” Mrs Singh says.

While her father wanted Deepi Singh to become a medical doctor, she herself was quite averse to the idea of having a stethoscope around her neck. Several rounds of hospitals right from early childhood had made her somewhat tired of the medical community. “I just did not want to see the face of a doctor or a hospital, I had been examined by so many doctors during my growing up years,” she says. She deliberately left her questions answered, even though her father sent her to sit in several medical school examinations. Earning the F.Sc (Fellow of Science) was just not on for Deepi Singh. Then one day when she informed her parents that she wanted to be a criminal attorney, they blew a fuse. She then decided upon Home Science, and her parents conceded, sending her to Delhi’s Lady Irwin College from where she graduated with a B.Sc., and then added a B.Ed against her name. The last degree would allow her to teach, at Delhi’s Lady Irwin School, which came naturally to her. The bone grafting surgery in one of her legs during this time helped. “Earlier I used to travel in buses with crutches,” she recalls.