By Lakshmi Balasubramani

Hello all, hope you are doing well. Im grateful for your interest in my writing. Another year is coming to an end. We saw our most significant festivals last month and hope you are all blessed with revived spirits from the celebrations. I did a small reflection and was happy to see that our India is making good progress in the international political stage, thanks to our Modi Ji and his team. I was also enthused by the recent achievements of Vedant Madhavan and Linthoi Chanabam in sports. Vedant made multiple achievements in international swimming and Linthoi is an achiever in international Judo.

This got me thinking, have we started our winning streak as a nation? Call me hyper optimistic! We have to start winning on a global stage is all aspects of competition not just in business and technology. As we are the most populous country, we have to be having equivalent participation in sports and arts as well. How many of us Indians will participate and win in the upcoming Olympics? I dream of a score board where we are trailing the US and China closely. It will take a few more Olympics before we lead the chart, I’m realistic about it. The roots of this achievement will begin at our homes, where children are fed with nutritious meals and healthy motivation to develop skills in aspects other than those required to make a steady income.

As migrants, we have a leg up in nutrition compared to our population living in India. We have access to high quality food in Australia, so I believe our children are better equipped with the physique to perform in sports. But how many of our children go ahead to take sports seriously and become professionals? I know that we as Indian migrants are not far away from creating sports stars in our adopted country. Our kids born in Australia will take an Australian identity and I wish our kids represent Australia in sports. I believe we are blessed as humanity with an abundance of talent, beauty, opportunities, luck, ambition and more. The question is do we have the discipline, determination, perseverance, purpose, preparedness, courage, guidance and more to take our sports and arts skills to a serious level and make it our main identity.

We as the largest diaspora of migrants, settled well globally, making the majority comfortable in our jobs that pay well. We have comfortably blended in with mediocrity. While a few of us have made it into the global C-Suite, we are yet to aspire for higher independent achievements like sports stars, artists, designers, authors and more. The time has come.
Kanakalakshmi Balasubramani (Lakshmi) is a devoted wife and mother. She is also an engineer with a Masters in Actuarial Science from UNSW, working in a private organisation. She has called Sydney home for the past 18 years. She embraces life with optimism and resilience, shaped by her journey as a migrant. Passionate about fostering happiness, she begins her mission at home—creating a joyful space where her family sings, dances, and thrives together. Lakshmi is also an avid writer, sharing her thoughts and stories through various online platforms.

(The views expressed in the article are personal.)