The Week India – July 21, 2019

20 THE WEEK • JULY 21, 2019

PLUS

How Cancer Made a Man Fall

in Love with Mumbai.

Mention Mumbai and you get a mixed bag of

superlatives. It is home to the filthy rich and the dirt

poor; business tycoons and street-side hawkers;

Bhendi Bazaar and, yes, Bollywood. Maximum City

produces heroes not just on the silver screen, but also

among ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

One such young man is Shekhar Jha, who first visited

Mumbai when he was just six. The year was 1992, but

this was no holiday: he had just been diagnosed with

Hodgkins disease, a type of blood cancer. Hailing from

a small town in Bihar that had no facilities for treatment,

his family was referred to a hospital in Mumbai.

A Late Realization.

“I was too young to understand what cancer was.

I knew I was unwell because I was undergoing so

many tests and had to take so many injections. When

you are young, all you think about is going out to play.

Even when you are sick, that is all you can think

about,” recalls Shekhar.

“I had come to Mumbai for a routine check-up. By

then, I had read that this was one of the best cancer

hospitals in the country. That was the first time

I realized that I might have had cancer all those years

ago. So, I asked my parents and they said, ‘Yes, you

had cancer, but you are better now.’

Ignorance can be bliss at times. His parents’ stoic but

dedicated approach to treating his cancer probably

helped him coast through it without added stress.

He laughingly recalls an incident from his childhood,

when he lost some hair after chemotherapy. “My

friends in the village said that I was a hero who had

come back from Mumbai with the latest hairstyle. I did

feel a little annoyed that they were teasing me, but

was also amused I was being called a hero.”

Shekhar Jha

My friends in the village said that I was a hero

who had come back from Mumbai with the

latest hairstyle.”