International Women’s Day 2018! Vibha Rani: How I defeated cancer

I am born and brought up in Mithila. I am not surprised that you too are shocked. Many people still ask me, where is Mithila and what is Maithili? To all of them, I have just one answer, “Place and language of Goddess Sita. Sita’s home is mine and Sita’s language is mine”. I belong to Madhubani, famous for international art – Madhubani Painting. Initially, like any other small-town person, I used to curse myself for not being born in some big cities, such as Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi…!

That was in the past. Today, when I look at myself, I feel blessed for being a small-town girl, as it is Madhubani, Mithila and Maithili that have carved my personality. I am enriched by its art, culture, theatre, custom, language, literature and of course, its folk and food, which gave me a sense to put up these traditions through my stage performance, “Namak – Swad gaane aur khane ka!” (Salt – a taste of folk and food from Mithila)

My battle with the Big C – Cancer in October 2013, made me aware of the shocking lack of knowledge and unreasonable fear even amongst the educated and well-heeled people, and I drew deeper into the well of comfort and inspiration a lifelong practice of performance and literature had created in me along with the traditional knowledge of food and wellness I have accumulated from my Maithili language and upbringing in Mithila.

Fear feeds on a lack of knowledge and the added atrocity of rejection and exclusion by society only adds to the cancer patient’s existing burden of suffering. I battled this danger of misinformation and fear with sessions of poetry reading, discussions and with the performance of a play written by me titled Popcorn Breasts, apart from my other plays. Popcorn Breasts voices the first-person ruminations of a breast cancer survivor, a crucial means to empower and eradicate the fear of other patients.

The poems I had written during my period of fighting back was published as a bilingual (Hindi / English) publication titled Samarth / CAN in 2016. The same was released during the Bangalore Poetry Festival, 2016 by the eminent Kannada writer and Chairperson of Sahitya Akademi, Dr Chandrashekhar Kambar.

I very discreetly decided to spend all the proceeds received from the book to the aid of patients currently battling cancer and having limited financial means. And it makes me happy as well as proud that today the banks, other organisations and individuals have embraced the book and taken it in bulk for gifting purposes and keeping copies for self. Today, this book is also supporting the government of India’s directives to promote giving books in place of bouquets.

Taking the book is not only the call of the cause, but the quality of the book and emotionality of the poems too. Post the eleven months of my cancer treatment from October 2013 to August 2014, I am back on my saddle of office work, theatre work, performing Namak, conducting soft skill workshops for Corporates and daily duties.

For me, cancer is not a bygone nightmare. With my writing and singing and performing which brought the much-needed light in those dark days, I enable the survival process of people who are currently battling cancer. The fact that it can be done with dignity, labour and laughter is a revelation even to people who are getting the best of medical and emotional support. Just as I created a different, parallel reality for myself during those months that I battled the disease by immersing myself in creativity of all kinds and as much as my body allowed me to, today I extend my helping hand, with my expertise in creative training to others, customising my aid as per their needs and wants.

I give away the knowledge and feeling that Cancer can be beaten with a little help from all of us around and I am not merely a lucky exception. I have not stopped here only. My “Cancer Awareness Campaign” is going through the poetry reading from “CAN” play based on these poems and on my real-life experience from the people in a satirical and comical form Popcorn Breasts, counselling people over the phone or in person etc.

I have made a page on Facebook under the title of “Celebrating Cancer” and started posting my photos, poems with the appeal to others to share themselves. I am so happy, that people, who earlier did not have the courage to utter that they are cancer survivors, have now started expressing themselves.

My other campaign on Facebook is “Share your photo on your FB wall with #tag #saynotocancer #celebratingcancer and #नाकहेंकैंसरको.” I am so happy to share here that people (general as well as survivors) have joined our hands and are coming up with their photos, experiences, real life stories. I just very humbly place them on my Facebook page “Celebrating Cancer.”

Cancer survival programmes with performance and eating practices, which I am currently developing, literally uses the arts to galvanise the body with pleasure and to fight back. It’s a curative, as vital for the body along with the medications and radiations, as I have learnt and applied in my own life. All the arts are interconnected and interdependent not only through the teachings of an ancient text, but they have been and will be connected always through human bodies.

No doubt, my positivity and my creativity has given me an inner strength to fight all the odds in my life including cancer. Cancer has given me a philosophy to live your life with full zeal and zest and doing something for the society and for the people, related with cancer directly or indirectly. Of course, my employer Indian Oil Corporation Ltd has stood up with me to fight back with this dare devil disease. At this moment, I feel so proud and humbled that I have bagged the highly prestigious SCOPE’s Best Women Executive Achiever Award conferred by “Women in Public Sector” (WIPS), just two weeks back.

I and my work is going on. At this junction, I will just say, join us. Say no to all negativity. Chill out and be with yourself for sometimes. Check yourself, consult doctors. Don’t hesitate. Breasts, vagina or uterus are very vital parts of our body. Without them, nature will not be able to survive. So why feel shy in uttering these words and hesitating to go to the doctors. After all, it is my life, it is your valuable life too. So, be vigil, be cautious! And cheer up your life by saying celibrating life, while demolishing cancer!