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Motivating: A cancer awareness camp at Hathikuli Tea Estate, Assam, conducted by Ritu Biyani (standing, centre)
Ritu Biyani despised the downcast, hang-jaw looks she received whenever she explained why she had a bald pate. The former Army Dental Corps specialist, who set up a clinic in Pune after retirement, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000. Seven chemotherapy cycles took a toll on her tresses.
'A woman actually jumped off the dental chair and fled,' remembers the 52-year-old dentist.
That sealed it. In 2005, Biyani rolled out Highways Infinite, a foundation that mixes high adrenaline activities such as cross-country road trips, mountaineering and paratrooping with raising money, creating awareness and organising check-up camps for breast and cervical cancer.
Dentistry took a backseat. The following year, she packed her bags and, along with her daughter, took off in her Ford Endeavour on a road trip to the four corners of India.
During the 30,000 kilometre expedition that put her in the Limca Book of Records as the first solo woman to undertake a journey of the kind, Biyani conducted awareness camps and counselling sessions and gave PowerPoint presentations to 26,000 women on the detection and diagnosis of breast cancer.
Biyani believes cancer was the best thing that ever happened to her. 'One cancer, a few body parts gone, but I'm now in touch with thousands of women' is how she looks at the outcome of the disease.
Like Biyani, a growing group of cancer survivors in India have made the fight against the Big C into a full-time mission. The launch of cricketer Yuvraj Singh's YouWeCan Foundation - set up to create awareness about the disease - and Bollywood actors Manisha Koirala and Lisa Ray's vocal cancer activism seem to have shown the way forward to many who've gone through the grind of gruelling chemotherapies and surgeries.
Cancer has doubled its grip over the world in the last 20 years, according to World Health Organization (WHO) statistics.
In India, it's struck deep roots - from affecting eight lakh people in 2001 to 33 lakh people last year. India reports the world's highest incidence of cervical, oral and gall bladder cancer - and the disease has been declared the country's topmost killer after heart attack.
While medical breakthrough has changed the physical course that cancer takes, it's the doomsday perception associated with the disease that survivors are trying to actively counter.
In 2010, Vijay Bhat started a blog and YouTube channel - Cancer Awakens - in honour of the colon cancer that struck him a decade ago. 'It changed my life for the better,' he believes.
Bhat used to live in the fast lane - working as director in the London offices of advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather, jet setting around the globe and making big money. He credits cancer with making him change lanes.
'It got me to slow down, confront my mortality and rethink my priorities,' says Bhat, who now lives in Mumbai, works as a leadership consultant, and actively propagates a holistic recovery regimen for cancer patients - which includes a positive mental state, rewarding relationships and spiritual practices.
Bhat's blog doubles as an online support community for cancer patients - something that India's cancer-care community woefully lacks, he says. 'Awareness is low and there aren't enough support groups to handhold patients emotionally,' he says.
So he drew plans to promote his alternative approach to cancer cure with 'holistic healing centres' in cancer hospitals across India.
But the cancer thriver - as he calls himself - hasn't found any funding yet. 'Working as an alternative voice for cancer is frustrating,' he says. 'Mainstream clinical men don't trust non-medical methodologies.'
Rahul Yadav, too, has taken a different route. Till last year, he considered himself a 'typical techie' - he had a plum job at HCL Technologies, Delhi, an offer letter from a Bangalore-based French investment bank in his pocket and a seven-figure salary.
But the good life came crashing in August when he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. 'My simple cough and cold suddenly metamorphosed into this monstrous beast of a disease,' Yadav says.
After 15 chemotherapy cycles, gall bladder surgery and a bone marrow transplant, Yadav sank into depression, wallowing in self-pity. 'I holed myself in my room,' he says - till an enough-is-enough realisation struck.
Yadav rolled out a cancer support forum called Yoddhas - The Warriors, in Delhi, late last year. With a team of 30 volunteers, the foundation has conducted several cancer awareness activities - including street plays in Delhi, a cancer quiz in IIT-BHU and participating in the Mumbai marathon - and is also raising bone marrow registry awareness.
The philosophy of the Yoddhas is that cancer empowers. 'The disease may weaken physically, but it needs you to put your strongest mental foot forward,' he explains.
Sushanth Kodela would agree. In 2011, Kodela was studying social entrepreneurship at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, when he was struck by adrenal cortical carcinoma, one of the rarest forms of cancer (affecting the adrenal gland). It was on a hospital bed, where he lay with stitches, tubes and plastic bags, that he thought of a big business plan.
Last year, Kodela, 27, co-founded UnCancer India, a cancer survivorship and care plan start-up that helps patients to not just live well but also be an inspiration to others. Its business blueprint won the second place at the US-based Livestrong Foundation's The Big C competition last year.
While Yadav and Kodela focus on cancer's empowering ability, Chennai-based Neerja Malik wants to help patients laugh off the disease. A schoolteacher, Malik says she's always had a gung-ho attitude to life - be it facing multiple miscarriages or breaking a leg. 'I brought the trait into my fight against breast cancer as well,' she says.
But during her hospital stints, Malik noticed that most cancer patients and caregivers did not think like her. 'There was a perpetual air of gloom in the cancer ward,' she recalls.
Malik made it her mission to fight the negativity associated with cancer. In 2004, she started a cancer support group at Chennai's Apollo Hospital - and heads it till date.
Meanwhile, Calcutta-based Ayan Chaudhuri tries to fill the information gap that cancer patients and their families face in India.
An IT professional, Chaudhuri saw the disease from up close when his mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2011. 'We knew little about it and had a long list of questions for the doctor. But he was impatient about answering them,' he remembers.
Chaudhuri launched CanAnswer the following year - an online group that has a panel of 15 oncologists, psychiatrists and surgeons, who answer members' queries. 'It's the first Indian community to link patients to doctors and offer answers from qualified professionals,' Chaudhuri says.
Clearly, cancer can be beaten - with a little help from the cancer thrivers.
