In 2015, when a 20-year-old college student Vishnu Venugopal signed on a piece of paper agreeing to be a blood stem cell donor and allowed a mouth swab to be taken, he had no clue what he was signing up for. As a National Service Scheme (NSS) volunteer, he was just participating in the donor registry camp that held on the college campus.
Two years ago, when DATRI, an NGO running a blood stem cell donor registry, sought him out, asking his willingness for stem cell donation to save a young cancer patient, his first reaction was panic. But his family gave him the courage and support to go ahead with the process.
The enormity of it all hit him only on Friday (September 19, 2025), when he saw the smiling 17-year-old Adinarayanan, the young boy with whom he now shares his blood and DNA too.
Life-defining moment
“A life-defining moment, no less. I didn’t even realise that my eyes were welling up. It’s not every day that you are made to feel that your life had a noble purpose,” says Vishnu, who works for Infosys now and whose blood stem cell donation was what had given a new lease of life to Adinarayanan.
