The Week India – July 21, 2019

12 THE WEEK • JULY 21, 2019

PLUS

The Power of Acceptance.

“I was afraid that I would never see my

daughter Asavari grow up. She was only

nine at the time. She was sitting next to me

when I told her about my diagnosis.

I hugged her and started crying. Seeing me

cry, she started crying too. Then, she asked

me why I was crying and I told her that I had

a serious illness and that I did not know if

I would survive.”

“She said, ‘But I thought you had a lump in

your breast.’ When I told her it was breast

cancer, she pulled away and asked me to

stop crying. She told me that Australian

popstar Kylie Minogue had breast cancer

years ago, and that she had seen her

perform at a concert recently. She said if

Kylie could recover, so could I. She never let

me cry after that. If she saw me crying, she

would say, ‘Crying doesn’t cure cancer.’

She was my biggest support.”

She also revived interest in painting to

keep her mind diverted during this time. “I

used to paint when I was in school and

college. But over the years, as with most

of us, I got caught up with my job and with

family life, and had stopped painting. I

picked it up again. Just the flow of the

brush would help ease my anxiety, my

pain.” She also read a lot during her

treatment. Basically a fiction fan, she also

read a lot of self-help books and listened

to a lot of music to ease the stress.

Hope has a Colour and

it’s Pink.

With one of the most traumatic times of her

life behind her, Keerti joined hands with

three other survivors in Bengaluru to start

the Pink Hope Cancer Support Group to

help others cope with their treatment

mentally and emotionally. “This was in

2009, and the group is still going strong and

growing. We do a lot of counselling. Now

that I am in Delhi, I do the counselling over

the phone. While it started as a support

group for breast cancer survivors, today the

group has expanded and we have a lot of

other cancer survivors helping out.”

The Art of Taking Care of

Small Things.

She always tells people that the small

things help you through the hard times.

“Take it one day at a time and live from

moment to moment. And never give up.”

Stressing the importance of early detection

and treatment, Keerti says, “The most

important thing to focus on in cancer is

‘can’...that you can do it and can overcome

it. We have to remember that. I felt the most

important thing, at least during my

treatment, was my attitude.”