B. Borooah Cancer Institute in Guwahati. Picture by Eastern Projections

Guwahati, July 6: When Chicago-based award-winning chef Grant Achatz lost his taste buds to tongue cancer, he knew he had just joined the mythical paradoxes of the blind painter, the deaf musician and now the tongue-less chef.

As he sat for chemotherapy, Achatz embarked on an impossible task of imagining taste — an acutely sensory activity — merely by the flavour of a dish.

By the time his radiation ended, the 35-year-old realised that he had benefited just as much from what he called his “creative therapy”, to help beat the swollen lymph nodes.

As inspiring stories about creativity and carcinoma fill the research documents around the globe, the region’s only cancer institute, B. Borooah Cancer Institute, has decided to try its hands at “creative therapy” as well.

The institute has begun motivating patients and their relatives to write poetry, short stories, even songs about their experience with cancer — from the initial shock of diagnosis, to treatment, to the harrowing after-effects.

The write-ups will be compiled and edited by an expert committee, comprising noted littérateurs and artists and will be published as a book titled Shristi (Creation).

Amal Chandra Kataki, the director of the cancer institute, said those suffering from cancer and their relatives go through a kind of physical, mental and emotional trauma, which mere medical treatment cannot alleviate. The creative endeavour, they hope, will help them express stifled emotions.

The enterprise has a medical angle too.

Creativity boosts positive energy, which in turn is good for immunity that can help fight the cancer cells, explained Kataki.

The book to be compiled by the institute will also contain articles from doctors and staff about their experiences with cancer patients.

The immediate inspiration for the compilation is Minoti Borthakur, a retired professor of Cotton College who wrote a book about three years ago on her fight with carcinoma.

Borthakur was detected with cancer at the fourth stage. Doctors at the Tata Memorial Hospital and Cancer Research Institute in Mumbai gave up hope and declared that Borthakur would not survive more than a year.

But she decided to fight back.

Borthakur now lives a normal life and has promised to help B. Borooah Cancer Institute in its cause.