Ayaan was only 4 years old when he was diagnosed with a Wilms tumor, a childhood kidney cancer.
He lost a kidney and spent months undergoing chemotherapy, a period that would exhaust even an adult. But there was a problem that caused as much distress as the disease: the boy refused to eat. He threw plates, threw tantrums, and none of his parents’ pleas worked in that hospital room.
Then Emraan Hashmi, a famous Bollywood actor, and his wife Parveen came up with an idea. They saved the actor’s number in Ayaan’s cellphone under the name “Batman”, with a photo of the superhero. Every time his son refused to eat, Hashmi stepped into the hallway and called, pretending to be the Caped Crusader, asking him to finish his meal. Ayaan, an absolute Batman fan, almost never said no.
Years later, five to be exact, the actor publicly shared that his son was now cancer-free. 🥹