The far corner of an extravagant house sits a round table for four, but with three guests today, they pull out a few extra chairs. Placed on a straw mat, a ceramic plate of Sindhi curry and rice; my favourite. I pick at it with a fork, until the conversation piques my interest.
Uncle: …did you ever wonder why is it that nails and hair seem to grow but our bodies cease to after a point?
It’s an analogy for what he further attempts to explain are the mysteries of cancer cells, I gather.
Uncle: As cells grow, get sick and die, they transfer information to the next cell. Like tan on skin sheds over time through the regrowth of cells, organ cells perish too, but keep growing and transferring information to the next cell. Yet, if a sick cell dies, it transfers to the next cell information that it is sick, and so the new cell grows to be sick as well. Which is why cancer cells grow. To prevent that growth, scientists are attempting to intercept that information passage. Claims are even made that meditation can access that space – but it is all speculation.
Talk about cancer arises from the inevitable conversation of Aunty’s current state, and her body’s refusal of chemotherapy. When the word is mentioned, her husband questions,
Husband: What is chemotherapy?
Uncle: The treatment undergone for those who are diagnosed with cancer.
Husband: Just like my wife.
Uncle: Yes.
I find the conversation timidly fascinating, a saddening revel in the decay of human life.
At a junction, as I tune back in, uncle mentions, (which I immediately write down)
Uncle: If you conquer the brain, then you are God.
He tells us more, more about medicine, more about the vitality of a second opinion and real accounts on its failures. How the heart remembers to beat, after being removed, stopped, and then performed open heart surgery on.
I’m fastened to my chair, even when my mother’s friend offers me escape.
Once again, at the mention of chemotherapy, almost as if the heart can forget, her father asks,
Husband: What is chemotherapy?
Patiently, they explain.