From Grenade to ted - The heartshatteing and yet Inspiring story of Malavika Iyer

Sometimes, one moment is all it takes for your life to change irrevocably. And when that sort of a staggering change occurs, it may be difficult to move past it. For Malavika Iyer, this was a day in 2002, when she was just thirteen years old. She had a tear in her jeans and wanted to stick it with glue. She went around looking for an object to spread the glue. What she didn't know was that a while ago, an ammunition depot had caught flame and thus, bomb pieces had been scattered around the area. When she went to her house's garage to find a blunt object, she found one that looked innocent enough. In fact, it was a grenade.

She pushed it onto her pants, and it exploded. Her hands were blown right off of her arms, and her legs were precariously holding on. In this state, she was still calm and thanks to her nervous system shutting down, she didn't feel the pain either. Until 4 days later, when she was in absolute agony. Before all this happened, Malavika said her life was practically perfect. In her own words, she was, "An overactive child obsessed with music, dance and sports. But I could spend hours dressing up, putting on makeup and being girly. Dance was one of my great loves. I spent seven years training in Kathak but would start twirling to any music, be it Bollywood, disco or classical. Anyone else would be haunted by these memories, but she used them to push through the next year and a half of surgeries and unrelenting pain.

While her peers were studying for exams, she was adrift, unsure of what to do with her life. She decided that she needed to return to normal, and thus, decided to focus on her exams. In the next few months, no one could have put in more effort than she did. And it paid off when she got a state rank and even got invited to meet the then President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. She said that this was what helped her know her own strength, and repeated the feat when she graduated with flying colors in 12th grade, then went on to study economics in one of India's top colleges, St. Stephens, and of course, graduate with honors.

Today, she is a Ph.D. scholar, and she is nothing less than confident. Though she had her moments of bleakness- when she wanted to do things 'regular people' did, or had to listen to people tell her that her life was over- she changed when she began doing her masters in social work from the Delhi School of Social Work. She had to go teach differently abled children and she began believing in herself as well. I ended up learning so much from them instead, she once said, eyes misty. She is also a phenomenal motivational speaker known internationally. She has walked the ramp as a model and has never let her injuries hamper her zest or confidence. She lives by Scott Hamilton's words- The only disability in life is a bad attitude.

Watch her TED talk here: