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.

The first meeting of Adi and Vishnu, organised by DATRI, at the MG College grounds here where Vishnu had added his name to the stem cell donor registry, was an emotional moment for everyone gathered, including Vishnu’s wife and parents.

For Devi, Adi’s mother, words could not define the feelings that were overwhelming her, on meeting her son’s guardian angel.

A single mother and a native of Anchal in Kollam district, she had struggled to bring up Adi and her cerebral palsy-afflicted elder son. Her world plunged into the depths of despair, when at the age of seven, Adi was diagnosed with leukemia. Since 2015 Adi had been under treatment at the Regional Cancer Centre and when the relapse occurred twice, blood stem cell transplant emerged as the last option.

The probability of one finding the perfect human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-match from an unrelated blood stem cell donor is 1 in 10,000. Devi says it felt incredible to be told by the doctors at the MVR Cancer Centre and Research Institute that a perfect HLA-match donor had been found for her son. The money for the treatment was found through crowd funding. In the midst of it all, Devi lost her elder son.

In the words of V.P. Krishnan, consultant paediatric hemato-oncologist at MVR Centre, Adi and Vishnu’s story is a miracle that science, compassion and humaneness helped happen.

Adi is today, in all senses of the word, a “ new “ person. He shares Vishnu’s blood and DNA. His blood group which used to be O negative is now the donor’s B negative group. He has just resumed his Class X studies at St. George Central School, Anchal.

Aby Sam John, National Operations Head – South DATRI, says that even when a perfect HLA-match is found, not all stem cell donations go through, because of fear and misconceptions in the minds of people.

“Aadinarayanan’s story and Vishnu’s generosity remind us that a simple act of registering as a donor can one day save a life. With over 6.1 lakh registered donors and 1,645 transplants facilitated, we urge more people to step forward—because you could be the one in millions, that someone is waiting for,” he says.