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Dukh, Dard and a Season of Hope
A few well-meaning folks who visit me hold my hand, weep some, and say they’re sorry for me. I don’t know what to do, so I pat them gently on the thigh (ladies only) and say, “Don’t worry it’ll all be okay”. They look at me strangely and mumble that I’m strong.
I’ve always been strong-hearted and proud of it. So am I not sad? When I was first diagnosed with Stage 1 of an aggressive type of breast cancer, I was stunned and disappointed in myself but quickly found my resolve. I chose to fight cheerfully, selecting the best doctors, eating healthy, praying hard, sending out affirmations to the universe, with a deep belief and faith that I’d be okay.
Then I learnt hope was a bad thing.
A year later, I was told my breast cancer had grown back and metastasised (metastasis is when your cancer has spread from its primary site to the rest of your body; it is also called advanced cancer, and the jury is out on its cure.) I googled it on my phone and to be doubly sure, on my laptop. It said the same thing. Now I became unimaginably sad. But I bit my lip and kept my chin up in front of the traitors (doctors) and the caretakers (family). Like every bad Bollywood film ever, I gulped and told the husband that something had gone into my eyes. And then came the waterworks. I cried into the pillow, at the mirror, into the curtain, in the shower and to a few friends who caught me off guard. The rest I avoided. As much as it’s important to cry your share, I also believe there’s a time to grieve and a time to snap back. Self-pity is a bottomless pit. So now I’ve crawled out, and walk noisily around the house with a shawl draped around my shoulders like Rajesh Khanna in Anand, scolding the husband and teaching him for the two-hundredth time how to fold a towel correctly, with the right side up. I’m past my Dukh.
Do I have Dard?
Oh yes, of all kinds that come with an illness like this one. But heartbreak and bikini wax still top my list in the ‘most painful’ charts.
Do I have Hope?
Difficult to say. It’s a long answer. The husband says, “Try starting from the conclusion.” I pretend I haven’t heard.
I stay on the nineteenth floor of an apartment in Thane now and though Ka the crow doesn’t visit here (quite a long flight from Bandra, with all the planes coming in the way), there’s a Crazy Cock down in the slum nearby that crows shrilly all day. For decency’s sake, let’s call it the Crazy Rooster. I hear his vociferous crowing first at the crack of dawn, then he calls boisterously to the neighbourhood at 10.39a.m., next I record his loudspeaker-like pitch at 1.21p.m., then he yells his lungs out at 3p.m. and so on, all bloody day. Clearly his body clock is screwed. Then I suddenly remember its spring, my favourite season, a season for craziness and hope. My sukh-dukhkisaathin, Neha Khullar, is visiting me. We stand at my bedroom window and look out at the dull blue water of the Thane creek. I tell her that its stillness unnerves me. She listens carefully, then cracks a joke like friends do to distract; I throw my head back and laugh. The sun sets between the brown-green hills and a silver moon rises above the water, just like a watercolour in motion. We stuff our faces with food, giggle into the night and look at the highway traffic till 2a.m., till Crazy Rooster goes off again.
To be able to breathe, walk noisily, listen to a rooster crowing, scold a husband, laugh with a friend and look at something so beautiful, is in itself a miracle. This time I’m not banking on the hope of a better tomorrow. I’m just glad to have had a beautiful spring day. A day of life is still life!
The Breast has Become Kali
Those who know me well, know that under a superficial veneer of dignity, I’ve always been flippant and borderline vulgar (‘downright cheap’ the husband corrects). Well, what to do, this is who I am.
In my head, I’ve always referred to breasts as ‘boobs’, a part of the anatomy that was created for physical attraction, for pleasure and joy (I’m the woman equivalent of ‘oh boy…cleavage!’ and you’ll always find me giggling at rack jokes). For me, breasts have never held any more importance than that. When some of my friends became mums and their babies started photobombing them by grabbing their breasts just as the camera clicked, I relegated the breast to a role of motherly comfort; benign and nurturing.
Now I think of the breast as Goddess Kali. And mine gone rogue. Malignant and ravaging through my body in a terrible red rage. Trying to take my life. Unstoppable by any force. Maybe our aeons’ old attitude of patronising the breast, ridiculing it and treating it like an object for pleasure or necessity has finally turned her into an angry marauder.
The breast as Kali demands her rightful respect and dignity. Who knows, only then she might stop her rampage.
Tales from the Tail End
By Ananya Mukherjee
The Last Dance
By Anmol Arora
She Stoops to Kill
By Preeti Gill
Dancing in the Family
By Sukanya Rahman
Maharishi and Me
By Susan Shumsky
The Book of Love
By Ekarat
Those Magnificent Women and Their Flying Machines
By Minnie Vaid
On Leaders and Icons
By Kuldip Nayar
Cancer, Your Body and Your Diet
By Arati Bhatia
Great Jataka Tales
By Noor Inayat Khan
The Greatest Indian Fairy Tales
By Joseph Jacobs
Strange Worlds! Strange Times!
By Vinayak Varma
Jiya Jale
By Gulzar in conversation with Nasreen Munni Kabir
Sky Is My Father
By Easterine Kire
Shillong Times
By Nilanjan P. Choudhury
The Rise and Fall of the Emerald Tigers
By Raghu Chundawat
Right Arm Over
By Moti Nandy
Looking for the Nation
By Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
The Impossible Fairy Tale
By Han Yujoo
The Disobedient Indian
By Ramin Jahanbegloo
The Scope of Happiness
By Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
The Flavours of Nationalism
By Nandita Haksar
Travels On My Elephant
By Mark Shand
The Man Who Saw the Sun
By Makarand Sathe
Sunita De Souza Goes to Sydney and Other Stories
By Roanna Gonsalves
She Goes to War
By Rashmi Saksena
Weaving Water
By Ajeet Cour
Manspotting
By Ritu Bhatia
The Haunted Horse
By Rudyard Kipling
A Time for All Things
By Ruskin Bond
Prison Days
By Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
Murder in Seven Acts
By Kalpana Swaminathan
Gardens of Love
By Meera Godbole-Krishnamurthy
Naishapur and Babylon
By Keki N. Daruwalla
The Guru Who Came Down from the Mountain
By Roshen Dalal
New Delhi Love Songs
By Michael Creighton
Dancing with the Nation
By Ruth Vanita
Don’t Run, My Love
By Easterine Kire
Woman to Woman
By Madhulika Liddle
Season of Crimson Blossoms
By Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
The Assassinations
By Vikram Kapur
Available Light
By C.P. Surendran
An Elsewhere Place
By Malay Kumar Roy
There’s a Carnival Today
By Indra Bahadur Rai
The Girl Who Couldn’t Love
By Shinie Antony
Lessons for Mrs Hauksbee
By Rudyard Kipling
Shehzadi Mircha
By Flora Annie Stee
Upcountry Tales
By Mark Tully
Smritichitre
By Lakshmibai Tilak
When the Moon Shines by Day
By Nayantara Sahgal
Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris
By Christopher Snedden
The Meaning of Civilisation
By Naguib Mahfouz
The Leopard’s Tale
By Jonathan and Angela Scott
Shiva’s Drum
By Chandrasekhar Kambar
Comeuppance
By James Tooley
Guldaar
By Stephen Alter
Is That Even a Country, Sir!
By Anil Yadav
The Elephant in the Temple
By John Lockwood Kipling
One Out of Two
By Daniel Sada
Dispossessed
By Ashwin Parulkar, Saba Sharma, Amod Shah, Shikha Sethia, Rhea John, Anhad Imaan and Annie Baxi
No Path in Darjeeling Is Straight
By Parimal Bhattacharya
The Secret Life of Zika Virus
By Kalpish Ratna
The Diary of a Nobody
By George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash
By Eka Kurniawan
A Night with a Black Spider
By Ambai
The Division of Heaven and Earth
By Shokdung
Tibetan Caravans
By Abdul Wahid Radhu
The Shah of Chicago
By Nate Rabe
Azadi’s Daughter: A Memoir
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The Ring of Truth
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The White Umbrella
By Brian Sewell
Mishti, the Mirzapuri Labrador
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Shared Tables
By Kaumudi Marathé
Pocket Piketty
By Jesper Roine
Eve Out of Her Ruins
By Ananda Devi
Star of India
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Unforeseen Desires
By Anil Chopra
Vampire in Love
By Enrique Vila-Matas
Half-Open Windows
By Ganesh Matkari
The Vermilion Boat
By Sudhin N. Ghose
The Flame of the Forest
By Sudhin N. Ghose
Curry
By Colleen Taylor Sen
Bombay Modern
By Anjali Nerlekar
Harilal & Sons
By Sujit Saraf
Immoderate Men
By Shikhandin
Tourist Season
By Jaina Sanga
The Woman in the Bazaar
By Alice Perrin
Lords of the Global Village
By Ranendra
Intimacy Undone
By Malavika Rajkotia
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Tiger
By Prerna Singh Bindra
And Gazelles Leaping
By Sudhin N. Ghose
Snowfed Waters
By Jane Wilson-Howarth
Murder in Mahim
By Jerry Pinto
The Adivasi Will Not Dance
By Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
Chandni Chowk
By Swapna Liddle
Perhaps Tomorrow
By Pooranam Elayathamby and Richard Anderson
The Sari of Surya Vilas
By Vayu Naidu
Kautik on Embers
By Uddhav J. Shelke
The Sun and Two Seas
By Vikramajit Ram
Out of War
By Swati Sengupta
Thamel
By Rabi Thapa
Son of the Thundercloud
By Easterine Kire
The Exodus Is Not Over
By Nandita Haksar
The Pocket Kamasutra
By Alka Pande
Amba
By Laksmi Pamuntjak
The Creature on the Moonlit Road
By Montague Rhodes (M. R.) James
Fatal Accidents of Birth
By Harsh Mander
The Curry Coast
By Binoo K. John
The Temple Road
By Fazlur Rahman
Loitering with Intent
By Ritu Menon
A Village Dies
By Ivan Arthur
Gandhi on Non-Violence
By Thomas Merton
A Season for Martyrs
By Bina Shah
The Haunted Dolls’ House
By M. R. James
The Big Cat Man
By Jonathan Scott
I Want to Destroy Myself
By Malika Amar Shaikh
Journey After Midnight
By UJJAL DOSANJH
Himalaya
By Ruskin Bond and Namita Gokhale
The Case of Lady Sannox
By Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sand Libraries of Timbuktu
By Rohinton Daruwala
A Full Night’s Thievery
By Mitra Phukan
Istanbul Istanbul
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Up Campus, Down Campus
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Garrisoned Minds
By Laxmi Murthy and Mitu Varma
The Sleepwalker’s Dream
By Dhrubajyoti Borah
Gulbadan
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A Book of Light
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Kohima
By Arthur Swinson
Belonging
By Umi Sinha
The Man Who Wouldn’t be God
By Shashi Warrier
Man Tiger
By Eka Kurniawan
Shell-Shocked
By Mohammed Omer
On Art, Literature and History
By Naguib Mahfouz
Indian Dust
By Rumer & Jon Godden
One Last Drink at Guapa
By Saleem Haddad
A Little Book of Happiness
By Ruskin Bond
Empire of Tea
By Markman Ellis, Matthew Mauger and Richard Coulton
Kingpin
By Kavita Daswani
House Spirit
By Palash Krishna Mehrotra
The Prisoner of Kathmandu
By Charles Allen
One Thousand Days in a Refrigerator
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Tram 83
By Fiston Mwanza Mujila
I, the Salt Doll
By Vandana Mishra
Feasts and Fasts
By Colleen Taylor Sen
The Yard
By Aliyyah Eniath
Tales of the Metric System
By Imraan Coovadia
Growing Older without Feeling Old
By Rudi Westendorp
The Silk Road
By Jonathan Clements
The Hangman’s Journal
By Shashi Warrier
Two under the Indian Sun
By Jon Godden and Rumer Godden
Beauty Is a Wound
By Eka Kurniawan
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
By Jerome K. Jerome
The Science of Happiness
By Stefan Klein
Bicycle Dreaming
By Mridula Koshy
The Ballad of Bant Singh: A Qissa of Courage
By Nirupama Dutt
River of Flesh and Other Stories
By Ruchira Gupta
Mother, Where’s My Country?
By Anubha Bhonsle
Framed As A Terrorist
By Mohammad Aamir Khan
The Hunter’s Friends
By Jim Corbett
The Fortunate Tiger
By Jim Corbett
The Invisible Man from Salem
By Christoffer Carlsson
Bullets and Bylines: From the Frontlines of Kabul, Delhi, Damascus and Beyond
By Shyam Bhatia
The Patiala Quartet
By Neel Kamal Puri
Remember to Forget
By Neel Kamal Puri
On My Terms
By Sharad Pawar
East of Suez
By Alice Perrin
We Are All Stardust
By Stefan Klein
New Songs of the Survivors
By Yvonne Vaz Ezdani
Runaway Writers
By Indu Balachandran
Friends in Wild Places
By Ruskin Bond
The Scenes We Made
By (Ed.) Shanta Gokhale
Like a Pinprick to the Heart
By Shujoy Dutta
The Light of His Clan
By Chetan Raj Shrestha
Into the Hidden Valley
By Stuart Blackburn
The Hindus: An Alternative History
By Wendy Doniger
The Naked Surgeon: The Power and Peril of Transparency in Medicine
By Samer Nashef
The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World
By Joel K. Bourne Jr
Animal Madness
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Asian Absences: Searching for Shangri-La
By Wolfgang Büscher
The Valley of Flowers: An Adventure in the Upper Himalaya
By Frank S. Smythe
The Adivasis Will Not Dance: Stories
By Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
Breakthrough: How a Teen Innovator is Changing the World
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Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life
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The Devil is a Black Dog: Stories of War and Revolution from the Middle East and Beyond
By Sándor Jászberényi
Nine: Poems
By Anupama Raju
Rungli-Rungliot {Thus Far and No Further}
By Rumer Godden
Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Under-Rated Organ
By Giulia Enders
The Many Faces of Kashmiri Nationalism: From the Cold War to the Present Day
By Nandita Haksar
The Edge of Another World
By Pepita Seth
Uncertain Light
By Marion Molteno
Reading the Kamasutra
By Wendy Doniger
The Ends of the Earth
By Roger Willemsen
Nehru’s India: Essays on the Maker of the Nation
By Nayantara Sahgal
Baluta
By Daya Pawar
In the Court of the Ranee of Jhansi
By John Lang
Art of Hearing Heartbeats
By Jan-Philipp Sendker
The Last Candles of the Night
By Ian Bedford
The Himalaya Club
By John Lang
A View from the Bund
By Ian Bedford