Cancer through the lens

Jasmine Singh

The mere mention of the word cancer evokes scare, actually dealing with it can be petrifying. In exposing oneself to numerous radiations, cancer patients deal with existential truths. Some like theatre writer and filmmaker Tahira Kashyap or actress Sonali Bendre fight it hard, pretty much smilingly; then there are others like singer-composer Aadesh Shrivastava, who passed away after struggling with cancer for 40 days. Here are celebrities who’ve made it, even with social media rotating fake news and videos!

Smiling through
Tahira Kashyap

Theatre writer, filmmaker and wife of Bollywood actor Ayushman Khurana, from Chandigarh, now based out in Mumbai, shared the news of her ‘stage 0’ breast cancer through a light-hearted and brave Instagram post. In the post, she mentioned, “I was detected with DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) in my right breast with high-grade malignant cells. Simply put stage 0 cancer/ pre-cancerous stage, with cancer cells multiplying in a contained area. The result is I have become a half-Indian version of Angelina Jolie (since only one breast was involved)! I told my doctor now is the time to give some competition to the Kardashians since Pamela is passé.”

Often celebrities deal with cancer in an extremely brave manner, something they are expected to do. Says Mohali-based psychologist Renu Kapoor, “Celebrities are human, sensitive and vulnerable like us; not that they wouldn’t feel fear, but they manage to collect themselves and rise above the situation. Also, they have so many people looking up to them; giving up is just not the option.”

Great expectations
Sonali Bendre

Sonali Bendre diagnosed with metastatic cancer - the headline came as an unbelievable shock for her fans and friends from the industry. After sharing a tweet, “A niggling pain led to some tests, which led to this unexpected diagnosis,” the actress went on to pictures of her dealing with cancer in her own way.

Says fitness expert Kartar Cheema, who is also an actor, “Celebrities can never fall sick because they are known to be health conscious! Cancer, however, is something that can happen to the healthiest of bodies. One does feel bad but saying, yaar us actor ko cancer kaise ho sakta hai is lame.”

Media pangs
Irrfan Khan

After much speculation and rumours, Irrfan finally tweeted about neuro-endocrine tumour. What followed later were fake news and posts on social networking about Irrfan and all kinds of possibilities of cancer they could come up with.

“This is can be so upsetting for not only the patient, but also for the family members,” says Prabhjot, producer and celebrity manager. “Social networking sites make an absolute mockery of the situation. Sometimes, it is the celebrity management teams themselves that guide them to not talk about the condition,” he adds.

Bitter truth
Lisa Ray

Lisa Ray, a cancer survivor and actress shared in one of her interviews that she was asked to not go public with the news about her cancer. “I was invited to Tornoto International Film Festival when I was two months into the treatment; I had gained 15 kilos, so either I could walk the red carpet or lie about my appearance,” she had shared.

Celebrities like Manisha Koirala and Anurag Basu, in the recent past, have spoken about the pain of dealing with cancer; the limelight, however, has always been unforgiving.

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