LEFTIE: How Cricket Helped Me Find My Way Back

When I was a kid growing up in New Delhi, I used to spend hours on the roof of my home playing imaginary cricket matches by myself. In my mind, I was always in the middle of a high-pressure chase, the crowd roaring, the stakes impossibly high. Cricket was not just a game. It was my first relationship with focus, resilience, and belief.

At the time, I did not have language for what was really happening. I only knew that when I played, I felt alive. I felt anchored. I felt like I belonged to something bigger than myself.

Years later, after moving to Canada and growing into adulthood, I lost that connection.

I kept writing through high school and my early teens, but eventually life took over. Like many people in their late teens and twenties, I was busy chasing momentum, fun, and validation. Somewhere along the way, the imagination that once felt effortless became harder to access. The part of me that used to create worlds started to go quiet.

In my mid-twenties, I returned to India and lived in Mumbai. That period brought me back to myself. I trained as an actor, immersed myself in storytelling again, and began journaling daily. Being surrounded by energy, ambition, culture, and character reminded me that stories are something you notice when you’re paying attention.

When I moved back to Toronto, I continued writing and began shifting toward film. I wanted to build stories I could share with others, stories that felt grounded and true.

Then the pandemic hit.

Like many people, I entered lockdown thinking I would use the time productively. But what I did not expect was how quickly my inner world would start to collapse. I realized that much of my self-worth had been wrapped up in identity, achievement, and being “seen.” I had built a life around performance and output, and when the world paused, I did not know who I was without it.

It was a slow unraveling at first. Then it became obvious.

I started numbing out. I binged food and Netflix. I drifted through days that felt flat and heavy. I told myself I was fine, because that is what many of us are trained to do. Keep going. Do not complain. Do not burden anyone. Be grateful. Be strong.

But underneath, my mental health was spiralling.

My partner encouraged me to get help. I resisted at first. Not because I did not believe in therapy, but because I had absorbed the same stigma many South Asian families carry. The unspoken belief that needing support is weakness, or that pain should be managed privately, or that we should be able to “handle it.”

Eventually, I agreed. And that decision changed the direction of my life.

Therapy forced me to look at things I had carried for years without fully understanding them. Patterns, shame, old stories, and the quiet pressure to be a certain kind of man. It was uncomfortable, humbling work, but it gave me something I did not realize I was missing: clarity.

Around the same time, I rediscovered cricket. My first nets session in Feb 2022.

Not in a stadium. Not on TV. In my own backyard.

I started spending hours outside again, playing cricket the way I did as a kid. Alone, in motion, focused. And something unexpected happened. The joy returned. Not the loud kind. The steady kind. The kind that makes you feel like yourself again.

Cricket became more than exercise. It became a bridge.

As I continued therapy and kept playing, I began to notice how deeply cricket lives inside diaspora communities. It is not just sport. It is memory. It is language. It is family pride. It is community. It is the thing that connects uncles and nephews, newcomers and second-generation kids, people who grew up with it and people who are trying to find their way back to it.

It is also, for many of us, one of the only spaces where emotion is allowed to exist without explanation. You can be angry, joyful, devastated, euphoric, and no one asks you to justify it. You just play.

At one point, I injured myself and had to adapt. I learned to bowl left-arm instead of right. That left arm eventually became my match-winning arm.

It sounds like a small detail, but it became a metaphor I could not ignore. Sometimes the thing that feels like a setback is the thing that forces you to evolve. Sometimes the version of you that survives is not the version you planned, but it is the one you needed.

As I lived through this process, the writer in me woke up again. Not as an abstract desire, but as something urgent and clear. I could see a story forming, and I wanted to be patient with it. I wanted to earn it, not manufacture it.

Now, after years of therapy, cricket, and rebuilding myself from the inside out, I am ready to share that journey through my debut feature film, LEFTIE.

LEFTIE is a grounded sports drama that explores intergenerational trauma, addiction, masculinity, and mental health, themes that are prevalent in our communities but often buried under silence. Cricket is the engine that drives the story, but the heart of the film is about healing and belonging. It is about what happens when a person stops performing and starts confronting what is real.

I believe stories like this matter because representation is not just about being visible. It is about being understood.

The South Asian diaspora is full of achievement, ambition, and resilience. But we also carry pressure. We carry expectation. We carry unresolved pain that often goes unnamed. We need stories that make room for the full human experience, not just the highlight reel.

My hope is that LEFTIE can open the door for reflection, conversation, and connection, especially for young people who feel alone inside their own lives.

If this story resonates, I would love to connect with members of the diaspora who care about mental health, storytelling, and cricket’s growing cultural presence in North America. Not just as funders or sponsors, but also as champions, connectors, and community builders who believe in what culture can shift.

Sometimes the most powerful impact starts with a story that finally tells the truth.

Seth Mohan – https://www.sethmohan.com/

About the Author

Seth Mohan is a Toronto-based writer, producer, and performer whose work spans film/TV, digital storytelling, and wellness. He has acted in major North American series, co-founded BottomsUp Productions in Mumbai, and built a global audience through his YouTube channel The Kaizen Man. He is currently in pre-production on his debut feature film LEFTIE, a cricket-centered story about isolation, identity, and finding community.