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It is about cancer and cricket; but more importantly, it is about the human will to fight adversity and triumph despite all odds Did I ask for...
It is about cancer and cricket; but more importantly, it is about the human will to fight adversity and triumph despite all odds Did I ask for cancer? That night, when I was asking god to make a deal with me, did I tempt fate? When you are ill, when you are down, these questions can come and haunt you. But you should square your shoulders and look them in the eye. Look over your life. Count your blessings. Like me you will come around to the view that all in all, like in cricket, everything balances out and it all ends up OK. On coming back to India after the treatment, I met the honorary secretary of the Indian Cancer Society in Delhi. She said, 'Yuvi, the way you have fought your battle in the open, you have wittingly or unwittingly become the ambassador for cancer survivorship. In this country where we have five million cancer patients, it's hard to believe no celebrity has ever had cancer. The last person who comes to my mind is Nargis Dutt.' I was the first famous person in the country since the beautiful Nargis Dutt to have cancer? I don't think so. Maybe I am just the first well-known person in India who is not afraid to talk about living with it, owning it, getting bald because of it, and battling it. Believe me, none of it is easy. One day soon after my return, I was chilling with some friends in Mumbai. We were laughing and joking around at a welcome party for me. One friend said to me, I hope the rest of 2012 is better. 2012? I thought she was pulling my leg. The others thought I was the one pulling the leg, taking the mickey out of her, and they started teasing her.Everyone started shouting and laughing. 'This is 2011!' I was puzzled. What was the joke? Was this not 2011 when we won the World Cup? Wasn't the 2nd of April 2011 a few months ago? Turns out more than a year had passed. It is a horrible feeling to misplace the happiest day of your life. Another friend recently gave me a T-shirt, which says: 'I have a chemo brain! What's your excuse?' in a sense, that's true. Chemo can wipe you out. But you can come back. You've got to come back. You will come back.A This is why I am telling you my story. About my life before cancer, with cancer, and my life after it. it is a story about struggle, denial, acceptance, and new struggles ahead. Soon after my conversation with Jyotsna Govil, the secretary of the cancer society, I started writing this book. Those days I would wonder and worry about how and when I would get back to my cricket. And then I would take comfort from the fact that I was writing my book. A few years back I had started reading Lance Armstrong's It's Not About The Bike and left it unfinished. Maybe, like they say, this was also destined. Perhaps I had to come back to Lance and finish his book at another time. I read it all the while during my chemotherapy, using it as a friend, a guide, an ally. It made me want to tell the world what happened to me. Just as we share our victories and joys, we need to share our grief so someone else can feel they are not alone when the chips are down. If there is one person whom I can help by telling my story, as I was helped by Lance Armstrong's cancer story, I will be very happy. I will feel I did not waste the year of my life that vanished. (An excerpt from The Test of My Life by Yuvraj Singh, with Sharda Ugra and Nishant Jeet Arora, published by Random House India)
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