They wait.
Marked by cancer.
For their turn.
Chemotherapy.
Or death.
Or one followed by the other. There is no rush here. Their time wilts. There is pain. And, an argument between dignity and that pain. Composure at the heart of indelible sorrow. Until the end of the passage. A charitable trust in Bikaner attempts to bring relief to the cancer-affected. Once in Bikaner, packed in the flood of help-seekers, each one wishes their anguish weren’t invincible. They await their turn into the chambers of hopeful relief.
“Why waste money if death is certain?” says a cancer survivor in Bhatinda. But many others make the journey towards erasing the residue of the Green Revolution. They travel the cancer train. A slow, bleak journey. A journey made in graceful acceptance of pain and indelible sorrow. There’s no tearing hurry; it’s a long battle against slow death.
They are from the fields of Bhatinda. Where the Green revolution seeps pesticide into their bodies. Mutates the deepest core of their interior. The wheat-rice cycle. That feeds a country. And, feeds off them. The Revolution left behind a thick residue – the residue of cancer. Pesticides from their fields have elegantly permeated into their lives, their flesh and intertwined themselves in their blood.
