Kozhikode: Nandu Mahadeva, a young cancer patient who has been popular on social media platforms for his inspirational thoughts and support to fellow cancer patients, succumbed on Saturday. A native of Bharathannur in Thiruvananthapuram, Nandu, aged 27, was under treatment at the MVR Cancer Centre in Kozhikode. He died at 3.30 am on Saturday.
About three years ago, after being diagnosed with cancer, Nandu had formed a collective named ‘Athijeevanaam’ to support cancer patients by connecting them to volunteers, charity workers who could support them financially and emotionally. He was the chief coordinator of this cancer survival group. In his last days, cancer had spread to his lungs. He succumbed while under treatment at the cancer hospital in Kozhikode.
Nandu was a real fighter, who had been extending all support and spreading positivity and strength in hundreds of patients through his cancer survival messages on social media. Even when the disease was gaining a grip over him, he faced it with a smile and fought it until it surrendered thereby inspiring many others to fight for survival. Despite being seriously ill, he used to reiterate that "no one should fail at any stage of life."
“If just one minute is left to live, that one minute... don’t be a smouldering smoke, instead be ablaze”, Nandu said. He had said that he would move forward with more vigour whatever he had to face in life.
“If my words and experiences can give hope in the life of at least one person, I am gratified. My ‘hearts’ (loved ones), the energy, love and prayers from all of you are my assets,” Nandu had said. His words and posts had given tremendous strength to many hundreds in their fight against cancer.
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Cancer, which Nandu calls ‘lover’, started ‘loving’ him when he was 24 years old. Starting as a pain in the knee, the bone cancer in him gripped him hard that his leg was amputated in the war declared against cancer. Later, it affected his lungs also. Even as the cancer was taking over his body, tissue by tissue, it could do nothing to Nandu’s mind.
It was on an April fools day, three years ago, that Nandu’s life took a different turn. Initially, it was a shock. However, as he went through the severely testing times, Nandu did not even once refer to the 'guest' in his body as cruel or demonic. Instead, Nandu named it his ‘lover’ by enduring it and fully accepting it.
Nandu’s thought was not that the disease need not be talked about, but why it should be hidden from others. On being diagnosed, Nandu considered cancer as a common cold, rather than a major, life-limiting disease when he got the results. Nandu, who sees anything and everything positively, slowly started taking the steps of survival.
He made himself believe that cancer is not a full stop to life. He also passed on this positivity and inner strength to all around him. “There is only love in me. If at all someone, rarely, is not able to feel it, that is because he/she does not dare to peep inside my heart. My love would surely flow and fill the hearts of anyone who dares to peep inside my heart,” Nandu said.
'In the biggest experiences of a small life, when the tissues of pain kept doubling, Nandu had to endure the piercing pain and remain sleepless on many nights. (His) mother was scared to leave a bill hook or a weapon nearby. Moments when a body organ itself turned to be an enemy. During the days of pain endurance at the RCC, Nandu kept telling himself that he would return to life and later proved the same to the world many a time.
Even when the pain was beyond endurance, Nanu kept singing from the Chemotherapy ward and wished the fellow cancer fighters and braved cancer. At such a time, being able to even hum a song itself was a huge victory for a cancer fighter. It was concluded that he would not sing anymore. But, he assured that if he felt breathless, he would rent an oxygen cylinder and sing with oxygen support.
Memories and people around him cleared the path ahead for Nandu. He raced ahead through this path with one leg, even after the other leg was lost in the fight against cancer.
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“I trekked up Panchalimedu, which is 3080 feet above sea level, with one leg and full energy… that too in 20 minutes.” he wrote once. Even the cancer cells, which were hiding inside his body, had knelt and surrendered before his grit - that he would even trek up the Himalayas if alive one day - many a time.
The doctors were shocked to see Nandu’s molecular tests results - a very rare tissue growth seen in many crores of cancer patients - a new variant. Nandu had estimated that one day a drug would be found for his 'variant' of cancer, the newly added form to medical science. That is also a hope presented before the world to fight any crisis positively.
While he went through the times of survival with songs and videos at home, Nandu’s buddies (Chankukal) on social media also stood by his courage and spirit with likes, and wishes. Nandu also had many friends who used to call him every day and exchanged pleasantries. When the old photo challenges trended on Facebook, Nandu shared an old photo of his, along with a photo during his treatment of him without hair, and another after surviving the disease, without any apprehensions.
"There is nothing to do with fame. Relationships, which are close to the heart, are what matters most. If someone says he is like one in our family when asked who is Nandu, no other recognition is as great as that..”, Nandu said, counting the achievements he got from cancer.
“The happiness on hearing that ‘this person is of another level’... that too from those who looked at (me) with pity…Even the happiness of receiving an award in front of an audience of ten thousand people is no match to that ...”
Nandu did not just fight and survive, he fought and won. “The society would show warmth and love to those who fight and win..!!”, he had said.
Yes, death has surrendered before Nandu Mahadeva. He won.
