Cancer is a disease that sneaks up on you when you least expect it. Bollywood actors have had their fair share of cancer scares and more often than not, they have managed to beat the life threatening disease. This issue, we look at some Bollywood celebs who fought cancer
Mumtaz won many hearts with her beauty and charismatic performances in movies such as Do Raaste, Chor Machaye Shor, Aag, Khilona, Aadmi aur Insaan, Upaasna and so on. At the age of 54, the evergreen actress was diagnosed with breast cancer. She fought the disease for 11 years and yet came out on top. She was also featured in the UniGlobe Entertainments documentary on cancer survival called ‘1 Minute’.
Sonali Bendre Behl recently revealed she has been diagnosed with ‘high grade’ cancer and is currently undergoing treatment in New York. The news came as a shock, and fans and well-wishers have been praying for her to recover since. Judging by the updates she posts on social media sites, her treatment is showing good signs of progress. We wish her all the best.
Another incredible Bollywood cancer story is that of writer-director Anurag Basu who was almost in a hopeless stage when doctors diagnosed him with cancer and gave him just two months to live. It was in 2004 when he was filming the Emraan Hashmi starrer, ‘Tumsa Nahin Dekha’, that he was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia, a type of blood cancer. The ‘Jagga Jasoos’ director didn’t give up and fought it out to come out as a winner.
Lisa Ray, the model-turned-actress who appeared in films like ‘Haste Khelte’, ‘Kasoor’, ‘Water’, ‘Bollywood Hollywood’ and the recently released ‘Veerappan’, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma (a cancer of plasma cells) in 2009. Though she chose to keep mum about it initially, she bravely battled it out to tell her cancer story to others.
One of Bollywood’s most high profile cancer survivors is Manisha Koirala. Manisha’s cancer was diagnosed after she fell unconscious in 2012 and was admitted in hospital. After some tests, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She underwent surgery in the following month and battled the ailment with remarkable strength. She moved to New York to begin treatment and spent a couple of years fighting the disease, triumphantly coming out on top. Koirala was last seen essaying the role of Sanjay Dutt’s mother Nargis in Sanju.
By Neeraj Varty
