Siami’s story: When grief meets glory!

India hockey striker Lalremsiami with her Asian Games gold medal at the Gifu Stadium in Japan recently. Pic/Hockey India

When India's women's hockey player Lalremsiami Hmarzote, 26, better known to friends and rivals as Siami, recently scored the Asian Games gold medal-winning goal against China at the Gifu Stadium near Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, life came full circle for the hardworking striker.

It was in Japan, seven years ago, that Siami learnt of the sudden demise of her father back home in Mizoram, while the Indian women's team was competing in the FIH Women's Series in Hiroshima. Team India's then coach Sjoerd Marijne immediately asked Siami to fly back home for the funeral, but the striker refused, insisting instead that she wanted to stay back and make her father proud by helping India win the tournament. She did, and helped India beat Chile 4-2 in the semi-finals, and thereafter, Japan 3-1 in the summit clash. It was a huge win because it helped keep alive India's qualification hopes for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Interestingly, this time, Siami helped Team India secure a double high in the same nation - an Asiad gold in women's hockey after 44 years and direct qualification for the LA 2028 Olympic Games.

Playing for the country is the ultimate honour for any sportsperson, and if the population of your nation is a billion-plus, that privilege becomes even more rare. It's this rarity that has driven some of the country's leading sportspersons, including Siami, to overcome personal grief and almost immediately return to successfully don the national jersey with pride. Sachin Tendulkar, Mohammed Siraj, and Rinku Singh are other examples of sportspersons who overcame the passing of their close family members while on national duty.

During the 1999 World Cup, Tendulkar, who lost his father, flew back from England for the funeral, before returning back to score 140 against Kenya.

In 2020, India pacer Siraj was in Australia as part of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series, when his father passed away back home. Due to COVID rules and the mandatory quarantine period, his return would've been delayed, so to avoid that, he stayed with the team and went on to make a successful Test debut in the series.

During the ICC T20 World Cup in 2026, India's Rinku Singh lost his father and headed home to complete the last rites before returning for the competition, which India eventually won.

In the above instances of extraordinary sacrifice and patriotism, Siami's story stands out, as she deliberately chose to remain with the team instead of heading back for her father's funeral. In fact, her teammates, including then captain Rani Rampal, almost insisted that Siami head home, complete the last rites and then return for the competition. However, the striker, then still only a teenager, would have none of it and eventually managed to convince her coach, skipper and teammates to allow her to stay and play.

So, what does it take to display such exemplary, almost superhuman behaviour, where one overcomes personal grief to not just continue doing your professional job, but in fact, go on to excel in it?

Dr Devendra Save, one of Mumbai's highly experienced and well-known consulting psychiatrists, tells me that it has everything to do with a strong mind.

"Firstly, let's get one thing clear. These guys also feel the same pain and hurt just like you and me. It's not that they are emotionally cold individuals, as some may wrongly feel. It's just that they can cope with this grief a lot better than you and me," Dr Save says.

"And this can be attributed to numerous years of hardcore training that they would have undergone, probably from a very young age. Sports training may seem mostly physical, but there is an underlying mental aspect that also develops simultaneously. They have gone through so much physical and emotional stress in their training years that this personal setback is just another stressful situation for them. It's the same psyche that helps a cricketer focus on a ball coming to him/her at over 100 miles per hour with over one lakh people [spectators] screaming all around. Like Arjuna in the Mahabharata had unshakeable focus on the eye of that fish, similarly, these sportspersons have an unwavering focus too to be able to not just return to their job despite such emotional upheaval, but to also excel in it. For these particular sportspersons, this is just their regular, high-pressure job that demands exceptional mental fortitude. Above all, they are pulling off what is no less than a miracle, but it's a miracle they always believed in," adds Dr Save.

Interestingly, a few hours after the Indian team's gold medal win in Japan, Siami took to social media to reveal her belief in miracles. "John 11:40," she wrote to her 70,000 Instagram followers, referring to a Biblical verse, where Jesus tells Martha that if she believes, she will see the glory of God, before he goes on to bring her dead brother Lazarus back to life.

mid-day's Sports Editor Ashwin Ferro loves to play ball, fair and square, and everywhere. He tweets @ashwinferro

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