I am Gauri Kapur from Sonepat Haryana and I got diagnosed with Brain Cancer in 2016. In this specific time who helped me the most is My best friend Supriya Singh who lives in Kolkata. I can never ever return what she has done for me. Supriya is an inspiration, the role she played is the most difficult and inspiring.
I laughed through the night on which I was diagnosed with brain Cancer. Instead to plunging to grief, I was giggling and laughing histerically. To be honest with you, first, I was scared. I also went to the extent of shedding copious amount of tears, flushing my cheek red. It is not easy to suddenly stand on the verge of a cliff and watch down the ends of it, with nowhere to go but to jump. even in that hour grief, there was a hand that held mine and pulled me from being slurped in the melancholy. It is but, because of Supriya’s presence, that the worst days of my life turned to gold.
I had suddenly become an alien. I remember my doctor suggesting me to join Cancer groups to get connected with more people who were suffering like I was. Because, probably he felt they would understand my pain better and I sincerely tried, finally coming to a realisation that people do not die of Cancer; they die due to lack of love.
We die with the world’s question tags for the span of our lives. For begining to look as thin as protruding bones, and hence by becoming a social outcast. It took Supriya to understand what I was going through and treat me in the way I best healed. Supriya showed that Cancer was not just mine it was hers too. Even when my body was failing me, I knew in hers I was thriving well.
Sometimes we just want to live because of something. And Supriya became my someone to try to wake up each day and live like a miracle.
We met online and became best of friends. that was two years back, and since then Supriya is pillar of my strength. I have not seen nor talked to her in person but still the way she etched to me made my entire life blessed.
I am fighting for my life. A warrior, I declare myself and also to Supriya, who fights no less along with me. All the survival stories that we hear are greatest battles won and we need to celebrate those heroes who fight with the curtains drawn upon themselves, like Supriya fights with me.
Supriya did numerous things for me and out of them the most special was writing these poems for me which I thought best to share with you, for if you ever come across someone like me, you know that love can transform worst into best.
Poems
I saw your picture and I smiled with pride. I mean just look at her.
How can she look so damn pretty, her hair so smooth and the twinkle in her eyes.
The pink of her lips curves beautifully in smile.
You must have been happy then, you look soo young, rejuvenated, like spring at its infancy.
How can you be best at everything? The elegance you use while you sit, The way you hold your head high.
You were so different then. You didn’t care of the world. You were the spark of a lover’s heart.
And you played upon the chords attached to the nerve closest to my heart.
I am sad to note. where have your splendour gone? Why has it all converged to your smile?
Ahh, that smile which smiles with gloom engulfed. I so miss your vigour, Your words of official pride.
But it’s weird that I have you all to myself. With all your pains and pleasures.
With your reasons to smile or cry. with your cancer stories.
I am there to notice the hoarse in your voice. There to feel the pain in your head.
I wish people could see like me. You are not the malignant cell in your head.
You are not even the blood you spit. You are not your visits to a doctor. You aren’t your decreasing weight.
You are that girl who danced her heart out, who sang in the voice notes.
Who fought for a social cause. Who bravely bore stares in the park.
You can still hold your head high. because it belongs there.
You can still scorn the world. who think you cannot.
Win The World
We laughed it off. As if it were the germ in the trachea. Sneeze for three days and it would be gone.
Words don’t seem to bring the experience with them. Do they?
The first time I heard- CANCER, I remember what I had thought “Cancer!? Come I know she would kick your ass and send you where ever you came from!”
And we actually laughed. So hard that I dropped my phone on my face.
The word cancer never appeared so grave then.
Or maybe I didn’t understand then that mortals were not afraid of this word for no apparent reason.
It was only when she told me how it actually feels to live with the disease that I realised the pain that comes with it.
How would it feel when I don’t want to wake up to the skull cracking pain in my head which leaves red marks on my forehead, but I have to.
No medicine or painkiller I take would ever cure the throbbing ache.
What if its a battle every day to drink tea, for what comes next is a spat of blood in the sink.
Sometimes she wakes up with swollen gums and swollen face. Scared to look into the mirror for her own face looks unfamiliar.
With her bones cracking without any injury.
I realised Cancer was not that small as I had imagined.
It took some time for me to sink in. To gauge the limits of it.
I so wanted to squeeze out the hurts and pain from her body.
The way it is giving way day by day actually scared me. I wanted to make her laugh at those silly silly jokes.
It made me sad. It actually hurts to see the people you love suffer and you know there is no medicine to cure her of the pain.
It is then she said, “It doesn’t hurt that much!” How much more could she have loved me to say even Cancer in her brain didn’t hurt.
How could she balm my hurts? The way she innocently conceded to my wishes of her waking up early, without complaints,
Without letting me be aware of the sleepless tormenting nights.
The way she drank 1 litre of water. (yes it is a big deal because she hardly can take a sip in a day).
It reminded me of the famous tale from Mahabharata, the larger we think our problem is, the stronger grasp it has upon ourselves.
I decided it wasn’t that big to define her identity.
And I was not that strong even to feel sorry for her. She wasn’t just the cancer patient.
She was not someone to be pitied upon by a passerby or the visiting aunts.
She was a fighter, a swordless fighter. She dared live a life and love it with all her might.
Why do you see her like that? As if she were going to die.
Who wants your pity anyway? You talk about her as if you grew her up.
It really doesn’t hurt your heart. does it? You return to your homes, brand her the petty creature and sleep in contentment,
Measuring the kindness you still have in your heart.
And here sitting miles away I contemplate on the irony of life.
You pitied someone who plunges herself out of life everytime she wakes up.
Who like a queen holds onto her life and struggles hard to make an identity different from being just a person fighting cancer.
Look yourself in the mirror, the way you look at her. I am sure you are not gonna like it anyway.”
