April 5, 2024
Cancer comes in as a distinguished guest, and with no fault of it is saddened by how execrably the human fanatic imprecates it. We are often so unapologetic in its condemnation. It has neither a face nor a semblance to the ghost pirouetting in the dark shadowy nights; but around its forbidding fief lays a fiendish propensity to slaughter the hubristic melancholy.
I often indulge in a self-exculpating distressed sledging of my body, if there is actually a cancer in me?
After all, it’s gratifying in the end to be free of any lump or an unusual ache. In situ, I voice from the alleged narcissisty of intertwined fallacy, “there is no cancer in me.”
I indistinguishably ask, “How did you find your cancer?”
– Was it in a slumber or in the wide deepening morning?
– Did the fragility lie like dead spine stiffening at the coccyx strangulating an ache?
– Or the madness inside one day liberated you but something already dreadful had taken prominence?
Isn’t cancer full of puzzles and permutations? One may live for years with it not knowing that the devious has already envisioned a future of indiscernibility an indisposed scrutiny.
What is it after all? An illustrious story of cells jogging inconspicuously pullulating to finally restore their longevity in the preponderant mortality of organs! It is so like the prolificacy of the lustrous popcorns that spread incoherently, undeterred to scourge the tongue, cutting it dry and crackling.
But, it’s the same cancer for you & me; it finds solidarity in its encumbrance to be grieved not in peculiarity but in unison. The idea about cancer has been strait-jacketed; the sweet-sweet sugar is a ritzy desert for the cavort cancerous cells. Smoking and drinking alcohol are demons, uncouth in their serenity to stir a conflict inside, and let’s not forget the saturated solipsism that hardly has any vested interest in your ‘salads’ making the last entry.
Wait! How could we not talk about the ‘Gene’ tall enough to sink your boots into carrying the brand, ‘Cancer in me.’ In all probability, the mutations will rip-roar in enthusiasm to make the heal straddle in the loop.
The news of Kate Middleton’s Cancer came in as a warning; does the distinguished guest really distinguish? I was terrified though—its abysmal powers hatching a gaff; the human body its primal occupancy. Does it really matter if it’s ‘Kate sitting on the bench’ or a ‘poor woman drawing water from the well’? Is it for us now to sit and assess how cancer insouciantly landed either with a ‘sweet waffle’ or the ‘panatela cum bidi’?
‘There is cancer in me’, the only thought, po-faced will now struggle with the iniquitous persiflage—‘why me’, and ‘Karma’ will unnecessarily become the white noise.
Is this where we want our life to trend, a cul-de-sac? Hasn’t it always been easy to blame food, lifestyle, past-life interventions or black-magic? Not always a strong thatched roof will turn out to be a reliable shelter; it can crumble without a known cause causing grief but its same grief that brings in clarity how to defend the improbable. To live requires ‘living’ and a roof must be built to protect what is still not lost.
The dread of ‘cancer’ needs redemption and the subsequent fight to make it less painful will eventually follow. What we see inside a cancer hole is the cryptic chemotherapy, a medicine shot that irrationally propounds a theory to live; we give in. The unbridled hair and disheveled skin relives the torment every day, and we pompously say we are healing. Inspite of the checklist, marked and unmarked with passage of time, what remains is the fear; the fear of ‘cancer in me’.
Cancer needs redemption from fear. It needs redemption from discriminatory impasse. It requires redemption from self-deprecating incandescence. What it finally requires is redemption from inclusivity of denial. Once cancer beams inside us, it’s there, growing and a halberd. We need to throw down the gauntlet to be culturally free of the ‘dread’.
Kate Middleton sits on the elongated bench to address the nation of her turbulent journey. She expresses gratitude to her loved ones, and how distasteful it was to convey the same to her kids. She is a beacon of light to encourage the cancer victims
“Do not lose hope and faith. You are not alone”
In conversation with her kids, she made her grief a strong weapon to gain clarity on her relationship with Cancer,
“I am well and getting strong every day by focusing on things that will help me heal.”
Isn’t this redemption from fear to finally be able to direct your energy on fighting the grief rather than settling in it?
And, Cancer never distinguishes.
‘The poor woman sitting on the edge of the well unleashes the same spirit’
Cancer lives and so should you!