LET THE SUNSHINE In
Cancer’s most terrifying burden—its unpredictability—is often also a gift. Survivors like Sonali Bendre and I know how. Looking at the cancer-untouched world pass by, in what sometimes appears to us like a fuzzy, smug, and desirable unison of normality, we recognise that we know life’s bare bones, we know that time is a gift. Some of us have also learned to laugh about our living years, now divided into AC (after cancer) and BC (before cancer).
By the time I met Sonali for this piece, I’d watched her being interviewed about her experience with stage 4 metastatic uterine cancer. Cancer has been with humanity for centuries, yet not accepted as just a disease. That’s it, and treatment can be more debilitating than the cancer itself. She has been imperturbably articulate, open to all kinds of questions—an all-round champion of the need to talk more about the disease. Sonali’s outspokenness challenges us, triumphantly: So what?
