Tejas Jaishankar: India’s Strongest Man

Tejas Jaishankar smiles as he looks around his well-equipped gym in the posh Vasant Vihar area of India’s capital, New Delhi, before settling down on a machine to do a set of bench presses. He fixes the weight at 80kg – 2kg heavier than himself – then, lying flat on his back, he lifts the weight smoothly 30 times. He hardly breaks into a sweat. Next the 22-year-old jumps up, strolls over to the barbell, loads it with 140kg of iron plates, and cleanly and effortlessly raises it above his head, before dropping it back down. “I did that 23 times in one minute at the India’s Strongest Man Championship in March this year to win the gold,” he smiles.

“Although I knew a vehicle had hit me, I don’t know why but I didn’t feel any pain at that time,” he recalls. Tejas struggled to get up, but then, incredibly, was hit again as the driver of the SUV panicked and in trying to check out what had happened, reversed his vehicle over Tejas’s upper body a second time.

“What surprises me is that I still wasn’t in pain,” he says. “I guess my body had gone into shock.”

“I was awake and fished out my mobile phone from my jeans’ pocket and found it was still working. I called Sukanya to tell her that I’d had an accident and was being taken to hospital. I then called another good friend, Mahendra Pratap, and gave him the same news. ”

At the hospital entrance, the car driver tried to help Tejas into a wheelchair, but the young man brushed him aside, saying that he didn’t need it. “Holding on to the shoulder of the SUV driver, I walked about 25 metres to the emergency section of the hospital,” he says. “Surprisingly, I had very few external injuries, so there were no blood stains on my clothes. In fact except for a minor bruise on my left arm, there was no sign of any injury.

“By now, though, I had begun to feel a throbbing pain all over my body and guessed I’d sustained some internal injuries.”

Because of the lack of any visible injuries, the doctors didn’t consider Tejas an emergency case, he says. “When I started complaining about the pain I was experiencing all over my body, one doctor did a regular check up and said that I probably had a headache! And it wouldn’t even require a painkiller, he said.”

The driver pleaded with the doctors to attend to Tejas. “The pain was slowly becoming acute but I was still awake and spotted Sukanya and Mahendra rushing in,” he says.

Sukanya was alarmed when she saw her friend. “The first thing Tejas said on seeing me was ‘Some birthday you’re having.’ He then smiled and closed his eyes. I could see that his body was bent at odd angles and he was clearly in pain. Not wanting to disturb him, I asked the driver what had happened and was shocked to learn the details of the accident. In fact it made me nervous to see Tejas so calm.”

Sukanya immediately called the Army hospital – Tejas’s father Major General G Jaishankar is an officer in the Indian Army – which was a 30-minute drive away, and told them that they wanted to bring Tejas there for treatment.

Once the Army hospital agreed, they rushed him there on the floor of a van as they didn’t want to wait for an ambulance.

Tejas underwent tests including an MRI, CT and ultrasound scans. “It was only then that we realised the seriousness of his condition,” says Sukanya.

Tejas adds, “By now, my entire body was frozen in a very peculiar, contorted position and I was unable to move even my head. It was as though I was paralysed.”

He was moved to the ICU and placed under observation.

After much discussion, the panel of doctors decided against operating on Tejas immediately as many of the injuries were close to his heart and lungs.

But despite his condition, Tejas was optimistic – and apologetic for the trouble the accident had caused. Says Sukanya, “When my father came to see him in the hospital, Tejas actually apologised to him for ruining his Sunday! The same evening, he told me, ‘I know you have gone through a lot today. In case you want to break down, you can do so now!’ The way he said that was rather amusing. Despite all the pain he was going through, he was full of fun and cheer. And he was extremely positive – sure that nothing would happen to him and that he would survive.”

Meanwhile, Sukanya got in touch with Tejas’s family in Sikkim, and they began making plans to rush to Delhi to be with him. Unfortunately, bad weather and landslides had blocked roads and with flights cancelled, it took the family three days to reach his bedside.

Although he was unable to move, Tejas was upbeat. “I was making the most of my ‘second life’,” he explains. “I will never forget the look on the doctors’ faces when I was smiling while being wheeled into intensive care. They were puzzled that I had not only survived the accident, but was able to remain positive.”

The time he spent in the hospital, he says, was the most difficult because he had to simply lie in bed. But just three weeks after the accident, X-rays revealed a near miracle: all his fractures were healing. “I believe in the power of positive thinking,” he says. “I refused to believe that I would end up bedridden and kept willing my mind to get my body in action and make it healthy quickly.”

He also devised a diet for himself – after consulting some experts – which focused on plenty of water, fruits, vegetables, nuts, proteins and unprocessed foods. Occasionally, he would also go on one-day fasts to toughen himself up.

It was at this time that Tejas met Parag Mhetre, a Pune-based karate exponent and fitness consultant, who runs a gym that focuses on core strengthening exercises.

Tejas soon became so proficient that Parag suggested that he open his own training facility in New Delhi.

“By then, I had begun to feel physically stronger and started developing my training system, so I decided to quit my job and set up something like that.”

In June last year, Tejas started Calisthenics 75, a training centre in rented premises in Vasant Vihar.

“Callisthenics is the art of training the body without equipment. I am a big advocate of body-weight training so named it Calisthenics [the American spelling] and added 75 as a random number! Initially I had two students, now I train more than 50.”

In addition to training with his students, he decided to train himself for the 2014 Ironsports Powerlifting Championship. But after the event got scrapped, Tejas decided to enter India’s Strongest Man competition. “I was in great shape and in a great frame of mind.”

“I did not win despite my accident; I won because of the accident,” he says. “My ambition now is to win the title five years in a row and completely destroy all the competition in India. Thereafter, I will move to international competitions and some day participate in the World’s Strongest Man competition,” he says.

“The importance of health and fitness is something that cannot be overemphasised. I often tell my students, I was able to overcome my horrific accident only because I was healthy and fit – not just physically but mentally.