The two men in my life

Two men have influenced my life. Their birthdays follow each other. Mu husband's is on August 14th and my Pa's on August 15th, of course they were born 38 years apart. There is another thing they share, something I did not really ask for: cancer! Maybe this is the cross that I was destined to bear. But in the last weeks when every bit of me has been on edge, when every nerve raw and exposed, when each of my senses have been but to the harshest test and when my travels down memory lane have taken unknown detours, I have come to one realisation: every cloud, however dark and threatening has a silver lining or as Pa would say only God knows the Big Picture of your life, you get stuck in dark corners not knowing what awaits you at the bend. So instead of moaning and wallowing in self pity, I need to figure out why the crab struck again.

Yes Pa's cancer was a difficult reality to accept, however pious or Cartesian one tried to be. Ma has succumbed to the beat just a few months earlier and there it came lurking again. Today I see the big picture. It all began on a hot day in May in 1949 when a not so young bride asked her not so young rotund husband for a promise. The groom was quite besotted with his new bride and accepted to honour the promise without knowing what it was. Poor man! What Kamala wanted that day was a promise that she would die before him and travel her last journey in her bridal gear. I am sure pa must have felt the weight of this promise he had no control on but the Big Picture had already been created and the promise was kept. A cancer took her away when she was barely 70. But before she left, she extracted a promise from me and I too gave it to her without a thought. She asked me to look after Pa till his last breath and never leave me again. At that time it all seemed eminently feasible. Ranjan was posted in Delhi and my daughters were both studying. I had a job I liked and all seemed on track. But then disaster struck. Ranjan got posted to Paris, a city ideally suited for a family imbibed in French culture. But there was a promise to keep. Papa was in perfect health and I was in a quandary not knowing how I would keep the promise made to my mother on her death bed.

Pa, the Big Picture believer simply told me to leave it to God, who ever that God was. I would have given him a mouthful were it not my father! But he was right as always and the crab was again spot on. He died in 29 days and freed me from a promise I could not have broken.

I spend many hours in the dead of the white nights that have been my fate these past weeks and wondered what the Big Picture could be this time as the BP is always meant to be blessed. And then it struck me. This time the beast had surreptitiously crept into our lives to bring us together in the most unexpected yet closest way. Every thing had to be put on hold. It was just the two of us battling to save our love. There were no excuses: bet it pwhy or golf! God was giving us the time to share all we had never shared, say all the things left unsaid, clear all the issues if there were any and be there just for each other. All else was on hold! Maybe it was also a promise that needed to be redeemed, the one we made on our wedding day and that somehow got lost along the way as we chased empty dreams or simply fought the battles of life lost sight of the essential.

In 4 sleepies (this is Agastya's way of counting time and means the number of nights) Agastya and his family will be gone for a long long time. There will just be the two us and the strict regimen that Mr Hodgkin's has imposed on us. In between there will be tender moments, reminiscences, laugher and maybe also the tears that need to be shed. We will walk gently towards the day when we resume our old life after bidding a final  farewell to the lymphoma - let us called it by its name - who came with a purpose and was part of the Big Picture.

When I'm sixty four

Today Ranjan's turns sixty four. But I have been hearing this number from the time we met almost 40 years ago! Ranjan is a Beatles fan all his Doon School pals would remember the famous Logarithms, the band he and three buddies created and which was a clone of their idols John, Paul, George and Ringo! I wish I could find a photograph and upload it. Will try and do so before the end of the day. When I'm sixty four was not part of their school repertoire as it was released post 66, and Ranjan is class of 66! But when I met him in 1974 it was one of the song he often strummed on his guitar and sang with a glint in his eyes. We were young and 64 seemed so far away. The lyrics made us smile. The losing your hair part seemed almost impossible when one looked at Ranjan's mane! The song made us smile. Will you still need me, will you still feed me....

Today the lyrics have taken a poignant meaning. Not one we could have dreamt of when we laughed and sang, when we were young. Today my husband turns 64 and yes he is losing hair, in chunks. I need him more than ever and feed him as I have never done before. Ranjan's 64th year turned out to be the one when he was diagnosed with cancer. The fear of losing him is real though I hope we will make it and he will be with me when I am 64 and losing my hair! Not that I have much.

Ranjan often played this song when he sat at his piano every day. I realise I should have known something was terribly wrong when he stopped playing, a couple of months before his diagnosis. It is then that I realised how much his music meant to me and was part of our lives. The deafening silence of the past months has been unbearable. I am just waiting for the day when the house is filled with his music again.

Ranjan is 64. The big party we had envisaged and dreamt of will be a small get together of dear friends and two unwanted ones: cancer and chemo!

But we will overcome.

Happy Birthday Ranjan.

TIme off

For all of those of you who worry about me, I took some time off today and indulged in some retail therapy. Ranjan's birthday tomorrow was a good excuse for me to hit the shops. Also needed a bed side lamp that would allow me to read and work in the bedroom without disturbing anyone. So found myself in Lok Nayak Bhavan and the Decon lamp shop. Brought back so many memories, some more than 40 years old. It is from the Decon shop, that we bought lighting for this very house with mama and also some furniture that is still there. Must say the experience was not as friendly as the old days when we had long chats with the owners! It was a rather cold reception but I got the lamp I wanted. Then went to Meher Chand market which is now becoming the new Khan market. In the old days there were just a few shops, one of them being a south Indian one that sold real coffee and where my father went often. I also hit the good old Tantra T shirt outlet and smiled at some of their zany T shirts and picked up 2 for the birthday boy.

On the same road, post the red light are a whole lot of new shops and eateries that I never knew existed. The reason I found them was that there is also an organic food store called Altitude that has a wide range of food stuff including quail and duck eggs! I stuck to hen eggs and also got some nice vegetables that had just arrived.

I was hoping to stop by a book shop and indulge in some browsing but it was time to get back to the drill. Must say I enjoyed my time off. Must do it more often.

Ranjan spent a quiet morning, sleeping and reading and bar a few hair that came off, he seemed in a good mood.

Smooth Seduction

I have been seduced. I guess that in this case the only weak defence I can put forward is that the decision I succumbed into talking was reinforced in every which was possible: by doctors of course but they are always suspect ( I have been reading that the very doctors who badger you into chemo would never prescribe it for themselves of their loved ones), by friends I love and trust implicitly; by my Tibetan doctor whom I had gone to hoping to hear she had a cure but who said that in this cancer chemo worked well and she would take care of the side effects; by articles carefully perused on the net. Every one said: HODGKIN'S RESPONDS TO CHEMOTHERAPY!

So I opened the tightly shut door and let the deadly brew in. (Apologies to someone I love a lot and who has been trying to convince me of the need of chemo.  Just to let her know that I will follow all the protocols prescribed.) However this whole approach really disturbs me.

Finished reading the Emperor of All Maladies, a biography of cancer. One would have thought that it would have answered the questions that plagued my hazy mind and helped me make my peace with chemo but far from that: it validated all that had instinctively felt and ma had also intuited and shunned even if it meant losing her mind. The approach to cancer cure seems totally illogical from a healing point of view and eminently logical from the business angle. And everything was done to make obliterate the former to point of ridiculing it and banning it, and everything was done to 'prove' the kill to heal approach as the only one with often outrageously low statistics to validate success.

Anyway the harm is done. But thanks to the Internet you can access all the 'banned' and 'hidden' information. Wish the world wide web existed when my mother was fighting her cancer. The only choice she had was chemo or nothing. I am sure she would have jumped at the juice therapy, the bitter decoctions and even accepted coffee enemas:)

There are many alternative cures, tested by few but that work: eating 17 apricot kernels a day till the biggies accept the benefits of vitamin B 17; drinking soursop tea or juice; eating ashwagandha or tibetan medicine pills. Thank fully all these alternatives also have brews to minimise the effects of chemo.

Yes I have been seduced this time but this unwilling seduction has made me wiser and more knowledgeable to alternatives. I cannot accept this approach that was again validated when the oncologist refused that a port be placed for Ranjan 3 days after his chemo. Can you guess why? because it would be too dangerous not for the poor poisoned patient but for those operating on him. One needed at least a week to allow our wonderful body to flush the poison!

Need I say more.

Update long overdue

The battle is for Ranjan and I realise that I often forget to update his status regularly. That is perhaps because all is going as well as one could hope and better, but I do not dare make the God jealous. So we had our second session of chemo on Friday last. We got abed and not what they (the hospital) call a recliner but is at best an uncomfortable sofa that would kill even a good back. Ranjan's has a weak one and was in agony for the first few hours till I got him a bed! So bed it was, then in spite of many messages to the good doctor to leave instructions so that time would not be wasted a we first needed a blood test to make sure the blood count was enough to take on chemo. So it was 2 hours before all this was done, then the chemo began post noon. An excellent nurse placed he cannula properly and we did it all through one vein and not the 5 and more pokes he went through last week. We were home by 6pm and then the wait for the side effects began. Till date we have had a few strands of hair coming out and nothing else except constipation. The wait is on.

In the meantime Ranjan is having fun with his grandson who leaves a week from now, jumping on his trampoline a few times a day, eating fairly well and not making grimaces at my side effect fighting brews and concoctions.

As I said all well till now.

This week 3 injections for the next 3 days to boost the WBCs, a blood test on 16th and then visit the Doc on 19th. In between all this, on the 14th he celebrates 64 years on this planet!

A debt I was unaware of

For the past weeks, since the diagnosis of Ranjan's cancer I have been spending a lot of what would be called 'alone' time and found myself looking back at the 39 years Ranjan and I spent together. Somehow this turned out to be a selective walk down memory alone, as all the so called difficult moments vanished or at least made themselves so tiny that they became invisible.

It is in these stolen moments, that I came to realise what Ranjan means to me and how he made every single wish, dream and even idiosyncrasy of mine possible. I stand guilty of having taken all this for granted. In hindsight I realise that every success of mine was seeded by him. He stood by me in my career choices never standing in their way even though some were quite inane. Anyone glancing thorugh my bio data would realise that I am a bit of a rolling stone. My first job was a midnight one at the radio station, something not quite appropriate for a married lady 40 years back. But worse was to come. After a seemingly quiet and sedate period as Assistant Professor at JNU and the IAS story played to please a demanding mom who always looked in me for her dead son, it is he who introduced me to the senior bureaucrat who would transform my career path for some years. One conference for the Young Congress set me on a semi political course and as a  conference organiser. Midnight became several nights be it Asian Games or Non Aligned summits. I was barely home. I was convinced I was the ultimate emancipated woman who led her life the way she wanted!

Today I realise that I could have done none of all that without the quiet and strong support of my life partner who had to put up with a so called modern woman. Today I know he did all that out of love. I was told much later how proud he was of me. I wish he had said it to me but Ranjan is a man of few words when it comes to emotions.

If project why exists it is again because Ranjan not only did not stand in the way but nudged me gently to live this dream. He was always there when I needed him and never complained when I took the house over for some extravagant folly like making soap out of Pongamia seeds or bringing hordes of slum kids to the house. He may have grumbled a bit, but I would have screamed has the roles been reversed.

Today I am taking time off from Project Why and I am doing so without guilt. Because I have come to my senses and realised that if not for Ranjan nothing would have been possible. There is a huge debt to pay, a debt I was unaware of, a debt I would have never been asked to repay had things been the way I wished.

For the next months, till he is back to his old self, I will do all in my power to make things better than the best for him, and try and repay a tiny bit of the debt I owe him. 

Or at least tear up!

Just wanted to tell all of you who are part of this journey with me and definitely my A team, a little about this blog and the reasons I write  it. First of all writing is the only form I have of getting rid of my demons and sharing my inner most feelings. So apologies for all the rants and raves and even the sometimes not politically correct diatribes. Writing this blog is may way of coping with what I never asked for and yet have to face. Writing is my way of keeping the happy and composed face I have to keep 24/7 and not screaming, or crying. It is in no way a diary tracing Ranjan's cancer. It is the diary of what I am going through, the story of how my life has changed, the story of how I am living almost symbiotically Ranjan's fight with Hodgkin's disease.

It would make it better to know that you are there sharing this with me, that the orphaned only child is not alone because God knows how I miss Ram and Kamala and even 2 day old brother. So write a comment, a smiley or just a word. It will make me smile or at least tear up!