"If you're expecting a tearjerker, then please go and read some Mills and Boon," says 38-year-old Sarmad Tariq, Pakistan's foremost quadriplegic motivational speaker who has been reaching out and inspiring people from his wheelchair.
Curled up on his bed, with the gas heater on to beat the winter chill, Tariq's story is an inspirational one in the country that has often being plagued by senseless violence and crisis after crisis.
At the age of 15, Tariq, son of a brigadier in the Pakistan Army, went to swim in a canal with a friend.
"I loved swimming and boxing. I took my clothes off and jumped head-first into the canal. Little did I know that the water was only two and half feet deep. I hit my dead and felt a surging pain run through my body," he told PTI at his house in Islamabad.
He was rushed to an army hospital with crushed neck vertebras C4 and C5, which had been broken by the fall and had in turn crushed his spinal cord.
"Two holes were drilled on either side of my head, clamps bearing 30lbs weights were attached in an apparent bid to pull my neck back into its original position," he said.
Still young to understand the gravity of situation, Tariq was happy with the accident as his doctors had told him only his ribs were fractured and he should be out of hospital soon.
"I was actually thinking that because of the accident, I would get sympathy as I was not expecting to do well in my Class X exams," he said.
And slowly the truth started settling in. He was paralysed neck down and will have to spend the rest of his life on a wheelchair.
Not one to be bogged down, he went on to do what most in his situation would not have been able to do.
He went on and first got a Bachelors degree and then a MBA with the help of an assistant who wrote the papers.
Tariq then became a Team Leader, Human resources, with a corporate firm in Pakistan.
"But I was bored of a 9-5 job, I wanted to do something different and quit my job".
His zeal for life attracted Kamran Rizvi of KZR associates who was into corporate training. He took on board Tariq as a motivational speaker.
