Cancer is one of the most dreaded word in recent times. I came Face to face with it when a senior of mine was diagnosed with it some 25 years back. She however conquered it and came back as a classmate of mine. She became a dear friend of mine but I don't remember ever talking to her about Cancer.

Post that I kept hearing horror stories about it and always dreaded it. But honestly speaking it didn't really affect me and I am ashamed to accept that I used to wonder why people use the term "Cancer survivor" in their bios. I used to think ok they managed to Fight it off but then does it become your identity for your whole life??

Now I know better!!! And from the bottom of my heart I apologise for my thinking!

Now when I see Sonali Bendra/ Tahira Kashyap / Irfaan Khan (those are the popular faces) telling people to fight Cancer with their might and to take each day as it comes; I applaud them on their courage. It take a lot of courage to wake up every day and to still be hopeful that life will play the cards that you want. And to smile in such circumstances takes hell lot of courage.

But then I see Mr. Parrikar and remember my father. Despite all his will to live he was in too much pain. His last few months were painful for him and our whole family. It was so difficult to see him slip from our hands every minute every second. He was so frail and though he wanted to live but it was very difficult to be positive, optimistic and to smile. I wish we had more time to fight this bugger off! I wish it wasn't Lever cancer which doesn't leave people with much time to live by the time it is diagnosed. I wish it wasn't cancer.

To be told that he has just few months to live was just out of movie scene, a scene which we have seen numerous times but never really thought would play in our lives.

Cancer really is the scariest disease out there and having seen it up close and personal I know how difficult it is to fight it and to come out as a survivor. All we can do is keep all the people out their suffering from one or the other form of cancer in our prayers. We can pray for their survival, we can pray to God to give them and their families immense strength and we can pray for their pain to be lessened.

I don't know if this post makes sense or not but it has come from the bottom of my heart.