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 anguish as the illness: the boy refused to eat. He threw his 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 had an idea. They saved the actor’s number in Ayaan’s phone under the name “Batman”, with the superhero’s photo. Every time their son refused to eat, Hashmi would step into the hallway and call while pretending to be the caped crusader, asking him to finish his meal. Ayaan, a huge Batman fan, almost never said no.
Years later, five to be exact, the actor publicly revealed that his son was already cancer-free. 🥹