Page 30 - NAMAH-Jan-2020

Cancer: a cheap bargain

Monica Gulati

Abstract
Cancer, as monstrous as it might appear, can offer one something greater and different than its
socially acceptable face-value. Many of us, during the process of growing up, lose touch with our
inner guidance, which is the only thing that is capable of being the Driver in this life. Once lost
and disconnected, we wander around with a deep hole that needs to be filled. But it never gets
filled up, no matter how many relationships or jobs we might change, or how many possessions
one acquires; that deep inner restlessness never goes away. Any illness, or tragedy, if it happens to
reveal our true essence, is then a cheap bargain. From now, the life has just begun, as it must.

“Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break. which was surely guided by Grace and nothing
A dead resistance in the mortal’s heart, else.
His slow inertia as of living stone.
If the heart were not forced to want and weep, Somewhere in my being, there was this
His soul would have lain down content, at ease, certitude that my emotional state was the one
And never thought to exceed the human start that had created it. I still don’t know about
And never learned to climb towards the Sun (1).” the source of that surety. Another thing that
I was sure of was — that the cancer was just
Cancer and a tête-à-tête with one’s self a signal and its existence wanted to tell me
something through that signal.
It was a bright sunny day in 2015 when my
urologist broke the news that I had bladder I immediately called up a friend who was
cancer. My first thought was, “How am I a part of healing and therapy circles. With
going to feed Anand (my younger one) now her help I found my mentor, Hitesh, who
that I will be in a hospital or on drugs of thankfully was not far away. I would just
some sort? I felt sad for the young fellow who have to travel from Delhi to Gurgaon,
would have to be deprived of his mother’s which was nothing. I was ready to travel
milk. But then, as soon as I was on my way any distance for this healing to get initiated.
back home, with my husband Lokesh in the It was as if I was now in a different world
driver’s seat, my mind started an activity altogether.

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