I used to read a lot till a few years ago. My room mate in the college hostel would hope that I would “break up with my Kindle”. But once I started working, my reading became less and less frequent. As I dealt with stress and then depression, I gradually lost focus to sit quietly even for a short span of time and read.
Then 2020 came and the pandemic hit. We were encouraged to work remotely, so I moved back home. At home, with my parents’ help, I got some semblance of a balanced life, and very slowly, my depression began to lift. This was when I decided to give reading another try. And soon enough, it saved me.
In May, at the age of 26, I was diagnosed with cancer, after a short episode of a seemingly innocuous cough.
My ENT specialist suggested an ultrasonography of my neck, as a just-in-case measure. While leaving for the appointment, I decided to pick up The Goldfinch to read while waiting in the lobby for this unnecessary procedure. However, in the scan room, the radiologist told me there were two lesions in my neck, and I will need to get MRIs and possibly a biopsy/FNAC to figure out what was wrong.
The next couple of weeks were a blur, with me dreamily drifting in and out of doctors’ chambers, imaging rooms and getting admitted to the hospital. I did not know what kind of cancer I had. I had officially not even been diagnosed with cancer yet. I did not know what the prognosis would be, and so I had no idea what to feel. All I felt at that point was an urgency to finish The Goldfinch. I did not really process everything I read, but this 800-page novel gave me the excuse to feel bad for Theo, the protagonist, and not myself.
Soon, the reports came in. I was diagnosed with Stage 2 Classical Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Around 90% of patients get cured of this cancer, and most of them go on to live long and healthy lives. Given my age and other general health conditions, I was told my likelihood of survival was even greater. I was to be a lucky cancer patient, if that oxymoron ever existed. Meanwhile, Theo also achieved some sort of redemption in Goldfinch, which was a relief.
The next one month was painful. The side effects of chemotherapy seemed too much to bear. But every time a well-meaning friend or family member called, they spoke about having read up about the disease online, how it was unfortunate, but how everything will be all right after six or seven months of ordeal. But that did not seem right. How could they know everything will be all right? Even if I just assumed the cancer would not kill me, I still had to go to the hospital every two weeks and according to the limited amount of research that had been done on the topic, lymphoma patients had a mortality rate of “more than 35%” from COVID-19. And even if I lived, I could think of a 100 ways my life will be different after this.
Around this time, I came across a book named Everything Changes, written by Kairol Rosenthal, a 31-year old woman who had cancer at 27. She curated the experiences of 12 cancer patients in their 20s and 30s, and meant this as a “comprehensive guide” for this demographic. It was the first time I found the acknowledgement — “everything changes”. I realised I was ready to take on these changes, I had just been bewildered that no one else seemed to understand or if they did, to acknowledge them to me.
Each of these patient’s thoughts resonated with mine, and for the first time since my diagnosis, I felt “not alone”.
“We read to know we are not alone. We read because we are alone.” — this quote from The Storied Life of AJ Fikry (that I also read in this period) will forever stay with me, and is probably the best explanation why I started reading so much in this period. (A.J. Fikry, voracious reader and bookshop owner, dies of brain cancer at the end of the book, just in case you were wondering.)
I thought I needed to know all about cancer. So I started reading The Emperor of Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. But a biography of cancer was bound to have too many deaths for me to be able to stomach at this point.
I had always been very cynical about stories where the protagonist goes through a difficult patch, but overcomes it and comes out of it unscathed. But when a friend recommended that I read The Choice, the memoir of Edith Eger, an Auschwitz survivor and psychotherapist, I decided to give it a try. I cannot possibly compare the experience of Auschwitz to the experience of having a curable cancer, but this book taught me that there was no hierarchy of suffering — something I repeatedly reminded myself when I met patients who had been given six months to live, or 30-something patients or the dozens of the more unfortunate that I met at the cancer facility. Reading this book made me realise that the goal was not to come out of cancer unscathed, but to overcome it and to embrace the wounds that it inflicts.
Reading The Choice also led me down a rabbit hole of memoirs by psychotherapists and that finally warmed me to the idea of seeing a therapist for my depression and the mental agony that had henceforth been caused by the cancer.
I took with me Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated, to pass the time before my first mid-treatment PET CT scan. When the radioactive tracer was injected and I felt the pain was unbearable, I told myself if Tara could take in her stride an accident involving her being in a bin with 2,000 pounds of iron, I could handle the tracer.
To deal with the quarantine, I read A Gentleman in Moscow.
To be able to meditate better, I read The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness.
To refine my understanding of feminism, I read Sylvia Plath, Roxane Gay, Lidia Yuknavitch and Maggie Nelson.
I finally read the classics that had been sitting in my bookshelf since my childhood.
And I read the novels that had stayed on my wishlist forever.
Reading sustained me through this period better than anything else could. My treatment is now nearing an end, and soon I hope to re-enter my new-normal life. But no matter how crazy or hectic life gets, this time I have promised myself never to get too busy to read.
ananya.chakraborty.nitt@gmail.com
