In her words, it the khunnas (loosely translated slang meaning resentment) against what she thought was injustice meted out in her early days that fueled her.

"Right from my childhood, I have always wanted to do different things in life. I was a good sportsperson and was good at a lot of arts. Studies was the only thing that I was average at," she says. Lot of sports is an understatement. Here's a list of sporting activities that Sheetal was good at: Skating, swimming, cycling, basketball, throw ball, and most other outdoor sports.

Outside of sports, she was good at drawing, painting, singing, dancing, photography, mehndi painting and other arty stuff too. "When I was in class 4, I got interested in singing and enrolled myself for classes. But when it once came down to a competition, the teachers played favourites to a studious student over me. Now looking back at that incident, I think that must have been the tipping point and shaped all that I did after that. I wanted to do something that will make all those who discouraged me to turn back and acknowledge me," she says.

From there on, she breezed through school concentrating on painting and dance, hoping to make it big in one of these disciplines. When she finished class 10, she wanted to go to the J J School of Arts in Mumbai to hone her painting skills. Again, she was stonewalled. This time it was her parents. "They told me that I can't go to Mumbai for my studies. They wanted me to stay in Pune."

Her parents' efforts were countered with typical steel. "I refused to go to college. I said, if you guys can't send me to Mumbai, I won't do anything else. I wasted one year, sitting at home, doing nothing." Sheetal focused all her energy on painting in that year. "Using all the eight types of painting I knew, I made a 5m x 3m painting of Radha Krishna. It took me six months to complete, but I was very satisfied with how I spent my time."

She also exhibited her works in Pune and won critical acclaim from senior artists.

But her parents wouldn't budge. They wanted her to study in a college close to home, and that too science.

"The next year, my parents managed to persuade me to go to college and I got admitted to Pune's Wadia College. Again, my parents said it was too far (it was 12 kilometres from home) and put me in Bharti Vidya Peeth, near my home."

As she narrates the early days walking down Pune's crowded M G Road, there is hardly a person who recognises her. The owner of a daredevil world record is virtually unknown even in her hometown. Ask her about it, she shrugs, "Right now I am not a celebrity. Some years from now, they will all recognise me." Coming from anybody else, that would have sounded cocky. But coming from the maverick, it sounds like the plain truth.

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