This Mother's Day, Meet Niyateey Shah — The Mother Who Raised India's Mountain Beast With Down Syndrome

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Prithvi Samrat Sengupta is 16. He trains six days a week, eats zero junk food, and walks into every competition with exactly one thought: I am only leaving with a medal. So far, he always has.

But this is not really his story. It is his mother's.

Niyateey Shah is a single mother who built her son a world from scratch - through a broken marriage, a diagnosis she was not prepared for, a society that looked away, and years of quietly doing what needed to be done. Prithvi is now one of India's most decorated young powerlifters, known in international circuits as the Mountain Beast. Niyateey would be the last person to take credit for any of it.

This Mother's Day, that changes.

Photo Credit: BoldSky

The World Just Stopped

Prithvi was diagnosed with Down Syndrome at birth. Niyateey was not told. Her mother kept it from her for eight months, worried the shock would be too much. She found out not gently, and not from a doctor, but in the middle of a heated argument with her then-husband.

"He just went ahead and said, 'You don't even know that your child has Down Syndrome,'" she recalled. "The world just stopped. I called my mum and asked, is this true? There was silence. And she said yes."

Her immediate reaction was why me. She had a flying marketing career, everything going right. It took three to four months to accept the diagnosis - and she says so plainly, for every mother who has felt too ashamed to admit the same.

"I wouldn't say the moment I was told, I hugged him and accepted it. It was very difficult. I think somewhere it's not true that we immediately accept. It's not easy."

What shifted things was Prithvi himself. One afternoon, he was lying in bed, barely able to speak, and tried to crawl - just a little. He looked at her.

"He said, 'Mum.' And that changed everything."

Their Own World

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Support came from her parents, whom she lived with after the divorce. The extended family was a different story - judgemental, and at weddings, quietly steering their children away from Prithvi. Niyateey and her mother made a quiet decision.

"We said, we don't have to go anywhere. We make our own world. We raise our child."

She moved Prithvi from an IB school, where photographs consistently showed him sitting alone in a corner, to Dilkhush, a special school in Juhu. The contrast was immediate.

"At the IB school, teachers never had a smile, even with normal children. At Dilkhush, every teacher smiled, and they manage more than 200 special children. I said, this is it."

She is direct about a pattern she sees across India: parents of special children keeping them in mainstream schools out of shame and social pressure. "Schools have become status symbols. It's very, very sad. The child needs educators who understand them. Everything else is secondary."

43 Floors And A Spark

Physical training started at six, on a doctor's recommendation - children with Down Syndrome often have weaker muscles. Prithvi's warm-up was climbing 43 floors. He hauled sandbags. And over time, his coach noticed something most children simply do not have: exceptional, natural strength.

A strength sport was recommended. After consulting paediatrician Dr Shobha Sharma, who advised against weightlifting given the fragile necks common in Down Syndrome children but cleared powerlifting, the decision was made. It was also Prithvi's own choice. Lifting made him feel good.

"He used to say, dekho maine 20 kilo utha liya," Niyateey recalled. "That was his motivation."

Coach Sanket Arekar took him on first when he could not even jump, laying every foundation. Coach Aman Vohra packaged, trained, and presented him to the world. Right coaching, she insists, is everything.

"For a special child, the coach must have the right attitude and patience. They form deep emotional attachments. They need emotional support too."

"Chill, I'm Coming Back With A Medal"

Iceland, November 2024. IPF World Open. The closest competitor in Prithvi's weight category was 32. Prithvi was 18, alone with his coach, the day before his birthday.

His coach put Niyateey on a video call from the warm-up area. Big men, everywhere. Her son among them.

"I asked him, Prithvi, aren't you scared?" She paused. "He said - no, chill, I'm coming back with a medal."

For the first time, she tried to prepare him for the possibility of losing. He was uninterested.

The final lift was a deadlift. His training maximum was 100 kg. The coach called her: 100 meant no medal. 105 meant bronze. She could not decide from thousands of miles away.

The coach whispered in Prithvi's ear: agar 105 kheech liya, toh bronze tera.

He lifted 105. Bronze. And a nickname that has followed him since.

"It was almost like a Bollywood climax," Niyateey said. "That too, the day before his birthday."

He Just Makes A Party Anywhere

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Ask Niyateey what Prithvi has genuinely given her, and she does not reach for medals.

She talks about a train journey to Gujarat during a difficult period in her business. She had booked a train instead of flying, quietly dreading it. Prithvi got on, asked if pizza was available, ordered his milk, pulled out his little speaker, and made a party for the compartment.

"I just forgot about everything," she said. "He taught me that when you want to be happy, you can just be happy. All the gurus say happiness comes from within - I actually understood it with him."

He now travels independently, navigates airports alone, and once called home from Starbucks - unbothered - while she and her mother rang him in a panic over a dropped call. He wants to be a fitness baker. He follows zero junk food without being told, and quietly scolds his mother when she reaches for wafers.

"Sometimes I think he is way more mature than I am," she said. "He is so definite in his decisions. He always has a reason. When he explains it, I have nothing to say back."

What She Would Tell Her Younger Self

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If she could go back to the woman on the phone, hearing the word "Down Syndrome" for the first time in the middle of an argument, what would she say?

"I shouldn't have wasted those four or five months not accepting him. The heartburns I went through - why care about anybody when your son is so promising? I felt depressed. I felt rejected. But it was not worth it."

Her advice to mothers in that same storm today is equally direct.

"Accept your child the way he or she is. The moment you do, you stop caring about society. You get so involved with your child. That is the biggest battle - acceptance. Everything else follows."

As for motherhood itself, she does not dramatise it.

"Every mother should see a star in their child. Be calm. Be patient. Just enjoy your child grow."

Prithvi, for his part, has already arrived at his own conclusion.

He believes he is God's gift to Mother Earth.

Niyateey Shah spent four months struggling to accept him. Then she spent sixteen years making sure he would always believe that, and raising a son who taught her, in return, how to be happy in a train with just pizza, milk, and a little speaker.

That is what she built. That is who she is.

Happy Mother's Day, Niyateey.