Book Review – Holy Cancer, Amit Vaidya

Life has this strange knack of making us do the very things that we swear to never ever do. I got a taste of this lesson once again. Couple of years ago, a friend of mine had gifted me a book with good intentions. But, the book was so crappy and the writing style so stupid that I couldn’t stomach it beyond 15-odd pages and had to throw it away. I made a promise to myself that I would never again pick up books that are unworthy and uninspiring. But, alas, another book just got added to that category and, unfortunately, this one was also a gift from a good friend.

When a friend of mine, whose family member is ailing from cancer, gave me this book to read and review, I was hopeful of reading through some inspiring literature that could help me spread positive vibes around. But the word ‘positive’ is in no way related to this book. If anything, this book is at best a pity-party and worthless whining. At least till the 100-odd pages that I could toil through, before dumping the book once and for all.

Amit Vaidya, whose memoir this book is, was a well-settled NRI who went through the traumatic experience of losing his parents within a couple of years, both to serious ailments. He himself was diagnosed with cancer and was predicted with only few months’ survival period. Tired of loneliness and determined to explore the alternative medicines, Amit arrived in India, taking the help of family-friends and relatives. However, except for a few, all his relatives showed an ‘indifferent’ and ‘uncaring’ attitude towards him. Managing to garner the support somehow, he arrived at a hospital in Gujarat that is said to offer a cure for cancer through natural methods and cow-products. And, that is how far I could get through in the book, before losing patience completely and throwing the book away.

The author states once that he does not like self-pity, but the pages all reek of it. Here is a guy, who wants the whole world to care for him and pamper him, without even giving a moment’s thought as to what it entails to support a terminally-ill patient, both emotionally and financially. Here is a guy who went and settled abroad, trying to make his life there but having had his dreams all cut short due to illness, returning home to the cousins and aunts that he didn’t take much time to interact with prior to his parents’ demise, now expecting all those people – that he didn’t care much about earlier - to care for him and help him heal.

Before you wear a holy garb and cast a stone at those ‘wicked relatives’, consider the following - a now-distanced-once-close relative of yours suddenly arrives at your home, seemingly in good health but claiming to be ailing from cancer, seeks the intense emotional care and monetary support that the treatment for diseases like cancer demand, but never ever shares much details about his ailment with you. Will you really be the good Samaritan that you would expect Amit’s relatives to be?

In this age and world, going through the day-to-day life in the routine manner is by itself taxing and demanding. Add to it the demands of caring for a relative that suddenly pops out of nowhere and asks to be cared for in his ‘final days’ – recipe enough to cause consternation in anybody’s mind. Many of his demands and complaints against his relatives, while he himself seems to be unaware of the plans in his mind, sound as sheer hypocrisy, especially since he had never been much of a part in their lives whom he bitterly speaks about for not caring for him.

This book is – at least till whatever page I could put myself through – a show of vainglorious hypocrisy soaked in self-pity. If you want something better and truly inspiring, I would recommend ‘When Breath Becomes Air’.

This book could very well have been named as ‘Holy Shit’, because it is sheer crap that sounds holier-than-thou. Inspiring is an adjective that I would never associate with this book!