Part #1
I was preparing my brief on Mr. Nilakanta Siva just before I got to interview him. I was going through his book, “When Thoughts Invade the Cancer Conqueror.” The book’s protagonist shares his perspectives, and one of the paragraphs lingered on for a long time.
“In the light of this situation: waiting for the urostomy bags, having lost the bladder, the prostate and several lymph nodes to the basket, he wondered if those cigarettes, smoked with such relish, and misconceived pleasure, with plenty of secretive scheming and strategizing, were worth it?
Do those teenage boys and girls he sees hiding behind the tree in that corner releasing smoke signals to others to join in know what they are letting themselves in for. He was in half a mind of displaying a flex board showing an abdomen with the stoma and the urostomy bag dangling from there to show this is where those kids’ smoking will lead them to. But this would be deemed vulgar. And thoughts continue to invade the conqueror.”
Huh, that was strong. It hits you like you need to get up and stub all those cigarettes in the world. And then I got talking to the couple who conquered cancer.
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A warm sunny day can only be glorious of the bright outlook of a couple who share their experiences with people to take on the King of Diseases with determination and a positive attitude.
Nilakanta Siva and his better half Rajalakshmi Siva are 60 plus, but their attitude to life is that of those in their 20s. Nilakanta Siva is an erudite scholar and a well-reviewed writer. His writing style taunts you with his tongue-in-cheek humor laced with practical advice, peek-a-booing you now and then, on handling bladder cancer, dementia – the Neuro, the Uro, and the Onco of it all.
Nilakanta Siva has authored 22+ titles that send a strong message to cancer patients, “You are not alone.” Through his books, he shares his experiences of the highs and lows of being afflicted by cancer. He is as good as a medico with his Facebook page posing challenging questions to oncologists and physicians on the whys and hows of patient care – Compile all his posts, and you can have an excellent dissertation on how patient information ought to be. But that’s the information about him in the public domain. Nobody knows what he could’ve been if not for cancer.
Pop him that question, and he responds without even a second’s pause, “I don’t know. I would’ve just been a retired scientist with nothing much to do, lying on an easy chair, maybe. If not for my affliction, I wouldn’t have gotten very interested in medicine or writing per se. Everything happens for our good.”
The early life of Nilakanta Siva
Nilakanta Siva has some deep connections with nuclear material – He was born on August 9th, the day the Americans bombed Nagasaki in 1945 – But precisely one year earlier, in 1944. As a scientist with Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC), he was at Pokhran on May 18th, 1974, when India test-fired its first nuclear explosion – Exactly on the same day, two years earlier, he got married to Rajalakshmi.
Yes, their wedding anniversary on May 18th reminds them of the Pokhran days every year. And somewhere in between all these explosions, he studied nuclear physics at IIT Madras, which he jokes, “It’s a typo you see, flip the NU in NU-CLEAR, and it all becomes UN-CLEAR physics.”
This humor, curiosity, and zest for life are vivid as he recalls his childhood, adolescent years, an affair with cancer. Reminiscing, he says, “My early schooling was in Delhi. I went to Columbus School, and the current Ambassador Hotel and Khan market was under construction then. My father was an officer with the Royal Indian Army under the British. He fought the Japanese in the Burma front and also rendered service in Korea from 1942-45. As wars were coming to a close, all these officers had to be demobilized (D-Mob in defense parlance).
He got transferred to Chingleput district as the District collector. The IAS examination-based selection was taking shape. So we shifted lock, stock, and barrel to Madras (now Chennai). From Hindi-English-Sanskrit as languages at school, I shifted to English and Tamil. A few years down the road, he got transferred again to Bombay (now Mumbai), and in my last two years at school, I ended up learning Marathi. I managed to scrape through with 37% in Marathi in my board exams.
But those days, colleges offered admissions based on your strengths. If you scored well in Math or Science, you were offered admission to a UG degree in these subjects, and your language marks didn’t matter.
I completed my UG in Bombay and headed to IIT Madras for my M.Sc in Nuclear Physics. Campus life was tough on me, as I had a support system at home that took care of washing, cleaning, etc. Suddenly, you landed upon a strange campus, where everyone spoke different languages, and you had to wash your plate, wash your clothes, and iron them. You were expected to focus on studies amidst all the homesickness that engulfed you.
Add to this, in those days at IIT Madras, our Heads of Departments (HoDs) were great minds from Germany, and in a quirk of passionate teaching, they used to switch to German without much warning. I also had to learn German to keep pace with their knowledge nuggets. But all this language prowess did come in handy at a later date.
As campus placements happened, I got picked up by BARC, and I was now a Scientist (Scientific Officer). I also handled media relations for the Chairman’s office because my English was considered to be top-notch. Soon I started becoming the face of his office at the press and media briefings.
I was about 27, and it was time to check out my probable life partner. After some nudges and kicks from my family, I met this lively young girl, Rajalakshmi, who was a couple of weeks away from her 18th birthday. I was on duty at Madurai, rushed to Madras to meet this shy girl in pavadai and dhavani.
After that evening of mentally welcoming her into my life, I got back to my next duty point at Trivandrum with fond thoughts of her lingering all the time. In a couple of months, I had to get back to my wedding. And it was one adventurous trip to Madras to get to the wedding on time, amidst a cyclone, awful weather and disrupted train traffic. That was a whole exciting trip to Madras, altogether.
Post Pokhran, I became the point person from BARC, as the entire world sought clarifications. Studying French, Russian, and German and my natural flair for languages came in handy to this role. I was always on my toes, and smoking started as one off-beat distraction and soon took over as a habit. This exciting journey with BARC started in 1966, and I retired in 1999.
Post-retirement life of Nilakanta Siva
Much after retirement, I was diagnosed with cancer in 2013. It was just a typical day, and we got back from the temple, and then my life took a different turn. I was shaken when I noticed blood in my urine. No injuries. Nothing! I was told it was my smoking, but I quit smoking when we were expecting our second child, way back to my defense. Media campaigns on passive smoking kindled me then, and I gave it up around that time.
Cancer didn’t worry me because I had no significant responsibilities towards my two children. They are well-settled adults and are living in the USA. My only responsibility to remain healthy was to my wife, and I owed it to myself too. I didn’t want to be a burden on anybody with my illness. Cancer is undoubtedly the Emperor of Diseases because to conquer it demands a significant amount of willpower, tenacity, and zeal for life. And YES, WE DID IT.
I had an excellent team of doctors and an uro-oncologist who went beyond his call of duty to see to it that I got past every milestone as a cancer survivor, and my most extensive support was my caregiver – my better half.
She always had a smile on her face – no matter what her mental and emotional well-being was, she learned to administer meds and managed my illness better than any nurse can. She took control of every demanding situation, had a positive outlook all the time, and was immensely pragmatic about the next steps. I did go through feelings of despair, at times suicidal, but she stood by me all through. Without her, this recovery would not have been possible at all.”
Want to know what Mrs. Nilakanta Siva thinks about their combined fight against cancer?
Check out Part #2 about the Mrs. & Mr. Nilakanta Siva: Click here
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