By Mr Sonu · Tennis coach, Patiala
The hardest return I have had to make was not across a tennis net. It was back to a life that no longer looked like the one I had planned.
I am Sonu, a tennis coach in Patiala. Today, I privately coach children. I am working, travelling independently and building my coaching work again. Behind those ordinary words lies a difficult part of my life: an accident, a disability, work I lost and more than one attempt to start again.
A setback can make the future feel very small. Mine did. Rebuilding began with giving myself a reason to try again.
When life seemed settled
Before the accident, I had spent years working as a coach in Patiala. Tennis and coaching were part of the life I knew. I had work, relationships and plans for the future.
When things are going well, it is easy to believe that the people and circumstances around us will always remain the same. I believed that too. I thought I understood my world and knew where I belonged.
On 24 February 2018, an accident changed my life. At first, some things continued much as before. The full effect did not arrive all at once. Over time, the life I had taken for granted began to come apart.
More than an injury
The accident left me with a disability, and getting from one place to another became difficult. That was only one part of what followed.
I lost my job. A relationship that I had expected to lead to marriage ended. My academy closed. Work, companionship and a place to coach had each given my life direction; losing them left me feeling helpless.
I also began to question assumptions I had made about friendship and support. Difficult experiences can change the way we see people. For me, they brought a hard lesson: I needed to rebuild my trust in myself.
That belief did not mean I suddenly had answers. It meant that, even when circumstances had changed, I still had a part to play in what came next.
Starting again, and again
I tried to rebuild my coaching work. I opened an academy, and it closed. I tried again, and another attempt also came to an end. There were further setbacks.
Starting again meant returning to something that had already disappointed me, without knowing whether the next attempt would succeed.
Still, I kept trying. Each time I lost something or an effort failed, I tried to learn from it and improve myself. A closed academy was a real loss. It was not the whole of my future.
I could not make every attempt work. I could keep learning from the attempt I had made. That became the difference between facing a failure and allowing failure to become my identity.
The ordinary things that matter
After the accident, going from one place to another caused me a great deal of difficulty. Today, I ride a motorbike and drive a car. I am working in a school and running a small coaching academy. I also coach children privately here in Patiala.
These are the things I mention when I describe where I am now. They matter because I remember a time when moving around and working felt far more difficult.
My disability remains part of my life. So does my experience as a coach. The accident changed my circumstances; it did not take away everything I had learnt or everything I could still contribute.
There is more I want to do. I am still building that life.
What I want young players to carry with them
Sport gives us a language for winning and losing. My own experience has made me think carefully about what those words mean beyond a match.
A loss hurts. Repeated losses can shake your confidence. Pretending otherwise does not help. But I have found that a loss can also leave something useful behind: a lesson, a correction or a clearer understanding of what needs to change.
That is what I want children to carry with them as they learn tennis. Improvement matters. Learning matters. One result does not contain everything a person is capable of becoming.
I have kept trying, learnt from what went wrong and returned to the work I care about. That is the experience I bring back to the court.
The lesson I take forward
My story is still being written. I speak as a coach who has lost, learnt and started again—and who still has more to do.
The moral I carry is simple: a setback may change the court, but it does not have to end the game. Learn from the last point. Trust the abilities you have. Give yourself another chance to begin.