This infusion day began with my daughter’s football match—the semi-finals of a tournament that has become her world.
My daughter, Sanaya, entered this world as a fighter. Born preterm and at a low birth weight, her first 72 hours were spent in the ICU, struggling for every breath through a high-flow oxygen cannula. She survived, and in that moment, I knew I had a resilient soul—a girl destined to grow into an outstanding woman.
Sanaya was inherently shy, a “COVID baby” whose early years were shaped by isolation. Social interaction wasn’t her strongest suit, and she often carried the weight of self-doubt. When she was younger, I used to tell her: “It isn’t necessary to be the best, but it is necessary to be kind.” She took those words to heart. Kindness became her middle name. There is a specific magic in her smile—a blend of shyness, happiness, and mischief. She smiles with her eyes, and that light reaches into the deepest corners of my soul.
For the longest time, she believed in a Fairy Godmother. I would hide presents for her, attributing them to the “Fairy God,” as she innocently called her. This past August, while sitting by a gentle stream in Kyoto, doing nothing but being together, she looked at me and asked, “Mom? Were you the Fairy Godmother all this while?”
I told her: “All this while, I was your mother. But there was a ‘Fairy God’ that guided me to do the right things for you.” She hugged me tight, a moment now etched forever in my memory.
Sanaya’s love for football began at Barcelona’s Camp Nou, with Lionel Messi as her first idol. Once she touched the ball, she never looked back. Football is her anchor; it is the constant adrenaline surge that keeps her afloat. Whether the day is good or bad, she finds peace with the ball at her feet. They say sports can change a life, and I have witnessed that transformation firsthand.
I see her processing my illness through the rhythm of her dribbling; I see her release her anger through the power of her shot. Recently, she showed me a video of Diego Maradona calling his mother after winning the World Cup. I told her to call me when she wins hers. I can sense her fear of losing me—a fear I once carried for my own mother. My hope is that if she ever has to navigate this world without me, my writings will serve as comforting shadows and a guiding light.
Sanaya is a live wire, hopping from one activity to the next with effortless grace. I hope she never loses that spark. When she asks what I was like at nine, I tell her how I used to drape my mother’s saree and practice my acceptance speech for the India Today Conclave, dreaming of becoming the best doctor. At 9, your dreams know no boundaries .She inherited my habit of dreaming the impossible.
I once told my father, “I can’t have everything in life.” He corrected me: “Yes, you can’t have everything… but you can have ANYTHING in life.”
We are a hopelessly hopeful family. We read books and we read people; we find wonder in the smallest details. To us, aspirations are only worthwhile if they are deemed “impractical” by the world.
I don’t know if Sanaya will become a professional footballer or if she will ever make that Maradona-style call to me. Her dreams may shift and evolve. But football has already gifted us both essential lessons for the soul:
To win, you must have a team. To succeed, the individual must sacrifice a portion of the “I” for the survival and glory of the “We.”
Football is existentialism in motion. You are not defined by a missed shot or a past failure; you are defined by the choice you make in the next moment. You are constantly “becoming.”
It teaches that the peak human experience is found in the present, where the self vanishes and only the action remains.
It prepares us for the lack of correlation between effort and reward. You can play a “perfect” game and still lose to an unlucky deflection.
The ticking clock is the most powerful character on the pitch. The desperation of the final five minutes exists only because the game must end.
The game , must end .
If my daughter learns these lessons, she will lead a good life, no matter where her path leads. I only hope I stick around long enough to witness it.
So, for today, I am grateful for the infusions that keep me on the pitch. They provide the extra time I need to keep dreaming, keep loving, and to keep the hope alive.