February 4 is the world cancer day. Cancer is the cruellest disease, whatever might be the type or the stage. No doubt whatsoever about it! How do I know it? For the New Indian Express, I wrote articles on cancer. I met a lady whose dis-ease began with breast cancer to morph in to uterine cancer as well. It was tough listening to her lament about how the disease relates to her very i-dentity as a woman.
Much worse was writing about childhood cancer. Be it the six month old baby with eye cancer or a six year old who played innocently without knowing what was imminent, meeting such victims of the cruel disease was heart-rending.
Equally tragic is getting to know the last stage, beyond cure cases. Palliative care, the inevitable use of morphine as the pain killer at that stage were issues which moved me beyond tears when I wrote an article on palliative care, a rather novel idea in India in the early years of the twenty-first century.
All these are instances of cancer assaulting physically. Much worse is the cancer cruelly cutting in to the societal space. Do you know its nomenclature? Yes, it is the fear of, the avoidance of, the rejection of excellence.
Yes, take any field of the public sphere, or private space for that matter, the hunting down of excellence is unmistakable. The worst case scenario, however, is in academics. This cancer is so wide-spread that, at times, its morbidity is frightening, especially because its nodes, hence spread, are everywhere!
What is the panacea? Tough to tackle as there seems to be an apathy at all which is terribly terrifying, what with the AI shrinking possibilities galore!
Pratima@ Cancer is an auto-immune disease. That is to say, the body seems to rebel against itself. Hence this metaphor!
Mathew Arnold had a beautiful image for such a tragic trajectory, 'ignorant armies clashing by night', not knowing whom they are fighting, finishing off, friends or foes!
Quote of the day: "Not all monsters hide in the shadow. Most smile soothingly during the day." An anonymous but apt quote!
Word of the day: stellar. The word, close to the celestial, that is, the starry firmament, means 'of the best quality', excellent.
Let us learn grammar: What is a transitive verb? The very term explains it, right? 'trans' is 'across'. A transitive verb hence is a verb whose action/activity, whether corporal/physical or abstract, is carried across the object. Let us look at examples. Children love pizzas. Students bunk lectures. I love reading. Poets use imagination.
Incidentally, the thumb rule is to ask " who" to find out the subject of the sentence, and "what" to find out the direct object. Tomorrow we shall further discuss the direct and the indirect object(s) when we shall try to understand di-transitive verbs.
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