PROLOGUE

The stadium that was filled with cheers fell into sudden silence and the faces of every single individual present there grew intense. She was breathing heavily and was set to flaunt her hard work of the past ten years into that one final shot. All the cameras focused on her as she flung the shuttle over the net with the opponent approaching to show her swing. The audience gasped for a second which was instantly turned into cheers as the opponent player missed the shuttle. IRA! IRA! All one could hear was her name being hailed, the Chennai girl who won the glorious gold medal in the Senior National Badminton Championship 2017. She felt herself going blind with the cameras of the media flashing at her as she arrived to give her victory speech. One of the reporters straight up asked her how she felt at the moment about her triumph and another asked what made her choose to become a badminton player.

She smiled at the questions and answered “This was the moment I waited for the last ten years of my life for and I am extremely overwhelmed not about the victory but how happy my father would be feeling now looking down at me.” She continued “And what made me a badminton player today was that one memorable encounter I had with a special person in my school. It’s funny if I think now how a silly crush back then changed my life tod…..” Ira choked on her words and started coughing painfully. It was just a mere second before she flaked out right in front of everyone who looked startled, spitting out thick and dark fresh blood all over herself. The next day, all the flash news and the newspaper headlines just talked about the lung cancer Ira have had for quite some time then and how India would lose one of its finest badminton players if she became unfit physically to carry on her career. ‘“Will Ira get cured? Will she return?” was everyone’s question.