You can always wait for the next year if you miss celebrating a festival in true style and spirit. But events like the Olympics and Paralympics come only once in a lifetime, hence, the overwhelming feeling when it's time to bid goodbye to one.

The curtains will come down on the Paralympic Games tonight. Sure, it will end the celebrations. But the spirit will live on.

Volunteers jumps into the pool in the National Aquatics Center, or the Water Cube, in Beijing, China, Sept. 15, 2008.

If the Olympics made the world understand China better, the Paralympics made the Chinese understand the fighting quality of the physically challenged better.

Under the Paralympics motto of Transcendence, Integration, Equality, Beijing held the biggest ever party of the disabled.

The 12-day celebration of the human spirit threw up many spectacular and touching moments - moments of unalloyed joy and the will to keep the fight up.

The Japanese-Dutch women's volleyball match provided one such moment. Asano Kumi missed her first Paralympics because she fell victim to septicshock 20 days before the Games. But her teammates made sure she was present with them, for they carried the 21-year-old's photograph and No 12 jersey on the court during every match.

The Japanese women lost all their games, but the Games are much more than about winning or losing.

Natalie du Toit created headlines even during the Olympics, swimming the women's marathon (10 km) and becoming the first amputee to do so. The South African won the gold in all the five events she took part in the Paralympics.

The Paralympics is about Oscar Pistorius too. Having failed to qualify for the Olympics, he was expected to create the tracks on fire during the Paralympics, and he did exactly that. The double amputee won three golds.