Last Tuesday, motivational guest speaker Parimal Gandhi showed Rotarians how he achieved the impossible
I HAVE HAD FOUR EPISODES OF CANCER. IN ADDITION, I HAVE HAD TWO BIOPSIES WHERE THERE WAS NO CANCER, SO SIX BIOPSIES AND 14 SURGERIES OVERALL.
I have been almost blind twice and been through five corneal transplants. When someone donates eyes, it helps people like me to see. I have had two surgeries for glaucoma, and I have lost count of the laser surgeries that I have had. I have undergone a cardiac bypass, I battled diabetes and temptation on a daily basis because I am Gujarati with a sweet tooth and sometimes live jalebi counters start singing to me “Cheeni kam hai cheeni kam hai, mujh mein hai kamm.” The moment I see jalebi my sugar starts running down. Salt is an enemy because of hypertension, sugar is an
enemy because of diabetes, oil is an enemy because of cholesterol, water is an enemy because my water should not be loaded up with too much water. Sometimes air is an enemy because I go breathless.
The grammar behind being alive and well is that I have been taking 12 kinds of pills three times a day, four shots of insulin and three types of eyedrops three times a day but life is not just what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you.
To speak of Covid, there is a way Covid is treating us – but how are we treating Covid? Will you break or will you stretch? The song, ‘Main zindagi ka saath nibhaata chala gaya, har fikar ko dhoonye mein udata chala gaya’ signifies
the philosophy of my life. The songs then follows, ‘barbadiyon ka shokh manana fizul tha, barbadiyon ka jashna manata chala gaya!’ I have written a book on myself called Cancer Mount, an alternative title that I had for it was – A Picnic in the Intensive Care. [showing picture]
This is the picture I took in the ICU, the people made a mistake of leaving my phone behind so here I am taking selfies, informing my friends and generally having a good time. The important thing to notice is that the man behind the mask is smiling. People get cancer, they get treated, nothing great in that. But to go through it joyfully is where I take an iota of credit and how do I continue to smile through all this? The fundamental principle is I have complete faith in the Paramatma. No matter what he sends my way, I know one thing – that he will take me through.
He will take us through whether we believe him or not but if we believe in him, it makes the process easier. Of course, to win a lottery I have to buy a lottery ticket. Similarly, I put in my efforts first, god puts in the rest. You have to embrace whatever happens to you. The fourth time I got cancer, I said, ‘okay, one more Prasad!’ So you accept whatever happens to you and do your best, you don’t use what happens to you as an excuse for not doing what you are supposed to be doing in life. I have a taken a policy decision to be happy no matter what, I want my life to be an exclamation mark, not a full stop. Mujhe dukh hai, magar main dukhi nahi hoon. Dukhi hona is a choice.
“Safar mein dhoop toh hogi, jo chal sako toh chalo, sabhi hai bheed mein, tum hi nikal sako toh chalo.” One of the other things that I did is I did what I loved. When I began working in the learning and development profession way back in 1976, there were two other trainers in the entire country. Farhat (Jamal, in his introduction) mentioned of these two awards. I think, in spite of the cancers, I still got the lifetime achievement award and then I immediately correct myself, no, it is not in spite of, it’s because of. Cancer taught me to value life!
My friends, you don’t need to have cancer to value life. We must value what we have been given and invest every minute. I have gone through most of it without my family. I live alone, my family lives in USA and I have let my green card lapse. But whoever is with you is your family. I have no shortage of family.
Enablers have entered my life in the dozens, they are in your life too. God doesn’t come personally, god sends people. I am going to introduce you to two.
I have been in Bangalore since March. I did not dare to step out because of my medical history. I am a disaster waiting to happen. I rented this place three years ago because I keep coming to Bangalore. Who do you think is my next door neighbour? A cancer surgeon! This is what in Bombaiyya language we call, ‘setting’. So, no matter what the problem, someone has been put in place to help me solve it. My book believes in this sentence, ‘I don’t believe in miracles, I depend on them!’
When my problem first started in the 70s, I was studying in Baroda. I had grown up in Ahmedabad and Nana Chowk, Mumbai, as well. What could a Hungarian engine driver have to do with a boy in Ahmedabad going blind? The Hungarian engine driver dreamed of becoming a doctor. He saved up enough money, became a doctor, decided to specialize in ophthalmology, immigrated to US through this god for to Tamarindo – I think he is the principle attraction of the town, and then he has a love for India because we use so many railway gauges.
He was present at almost every eye doctor conference in India at that time and one of them was in Ahmedabad. I went and showed my eyes, I had already had one transplant, it did not work. He said come to me in Amarillo, Texas, I will do another transplant and I am very sure that your vision will come back. I didn’t have the money to go, quite frankly. And I didn’t have the US$ 8000 needed for the surgery.
By 1993, I was almost blind and I didn’t have the money to go to the US and get the surgery done. That is when the Rotary International came. There was an advertisement for a group study exchange programme. You hear that unless you know somebody, you can’t get selected, but I got selected and I knew nobody. I didn’t know a single Rotarian at that time. There I was all ready to go to the US, still with no money for the surgery. Well, I had a gland come out between the departure and the two months to selection at that time. And a biopsy was done, the Baroda histopathologist had said that it was nothing to worry about. But they had also sent the blocks to Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai. They said that this was Hodgkin’s disease, lymphocytic pre-dominant. So, on the one hand, I had a modicum of opportunity to get my eye surgery done and here cancer crops up and normally what happens is that you drop everything and take treatment for cancer.
Some 30 years before that, my family had gone to Mount Abu for a vacation and they ran into another family from Mumbai, Palanpuri Jains, diamond traders. Along with them was a school-going boy who had decided he was going to become a doctor. Not only did he become a doctor, he specialized in oncosurgery. So, Dr. Ashok Mehta was already in my life. We meet so many people on vacations, exchange phone numbers, but don’t stay in touch. My family and Dr. Ashok Mehta’s family kept in touch for a long time. My sister would tie him a rakhi, and he took my wedding pictures. When this happened, he was the head of the department at Tata Memorial. He reassured my parents that their son was going to live longer than them. Hodgkin’s disease can be controlled, it is a very slow-growing disease.
On top of it, he was a Rotarian and he had group study exchange students in his home. So I shared my predicament with him: that I would like to have my eyes fixed first and cancer treatment afterwards. He said normally you would have to go through a surgery where they cut you open to the pelvis to see what is right and what is wrong, remove whatever is wrong and stitch you up again, and four months of bed rest after. But technology intervened. 1984 was the year when CAT scan came. There was only one machine in India at the Nanavati Hospital. But there was a six-month queue. I turned up at Nanavati at 8.45 am – they opened at 9 am – and the 9 am patient did not turn up. The same thing happened at my GSE selection, I was a standby candidate but somehow that candidate did not show up and I got selected. So, you need to show that you are serious and then god puts in the rest.
My CAT scan showed that the cancer had not spread so I was allowed to leave with the promise that I would be back in two months to take the treatment. I took a risk because the disease could have spread quickly. I have seen this in my life, it’s my fifth principle, exercise your right to try. Prove that you are serious and keep doing it till you succeed.
On the group study exchange programme, in a small town in southern Illinois, I was reading the material with a magnifier and someone who I was staying with but did not know, asked me why. Turns out they had a wonderful eye doctor in that small town – a Dr Meenakshi Desai – as their Ophthalmologist.
Here’s the setting – Dr Meenakshi Desai’s father and my father used to play cards in Ahmedabad at the Sport’s Club. I had never met her before. She said you can do a corneal transplant and you can come out of it. I said I didn’t want to do a corneal transplant, I didn’t have enough money. She said to have faith. She and the wonderful Dr. John Alpar people put together a Parimal Gandhi Corneal Transplant Fund. This was the first example of crowd sourcing that I had seen.
Somebody gave a $50, some gave $100, some gave $500. They collected $8000 and gave them to me and said go back with your vision and soul. This is the power of an individual Rotarian.
I underwent another corneal transplant in 1991 and this one I could do on my own because the first one put me on my feet and I could see very clearly due to that transplant. And, I had two Americans living inside me so I was like a walking United Nations because the corneas were contributed by the Americans. I had new vision. I was able to read the font of the Yellow Pages, count the number of Indians in the dialler’s list just because I could do it. The carpet changed colour, women started looking prettier. I was telling my sister that I can count the wrinkles on your face and she would chase me for saying it. Till you lose it, you have no idea what vision is worth. And, so, this became my Rotary eye because it had come with the good wishes of so many Rotarians.
Another interesting thing happened after the surgery in Amarillo. The anaestheologist who came with Dr John Alpar was Dr Mahendra Patel from Baroda. He said, ‘You are from Baroda, I am from Baroda, you are Gujarati, I am Gujarati, you are Indian, I am Indian. I can’t charge you, so I am forgoing my $1000 fee.’ So I said, ‘Mahendra bhai I have the money, the Rotarians have been very kind, you don’t need to do this.’ He said, ‘No, you have other needs for the money.’ And then he says, ‘Dr John Alpar is smiling away and what he is not telling you is that he is not charging you either.’
Why should anybody do this for me? They didn’t know me at all. Both of them said that we want you to take the treatment for cancer in the US. Go back with a new vision and go back cancer free. So you will need your $8000 for that. I shopped around for some hospital that did not do a staging laparotomy and found out that Emerson Cancer Centre in the US does another lymphangiogram. So there I was in Houston, staying with a cousin with whom my family had lost touch but with whom I had relieved the connect when I was in Baroda. So, I’ll tell you, if there is god it is in the form of these people.
Today when I think back, I would have not had myself in my home for 9 months undergoing cancer treatment and chemotherapy, undergoing radiations if I had three kids, two sisters and one husband staying with me and if I had worked in a dancing class or architectural firm full time. That is what Uma ben did. And yet she had in her home for 9 months. So well, I went through chemotherapy, it is a poison because it kills normal cells and cancer cells but the cancer cells don’t grow back, the normal cells do. So the loss of hair. It was in this room that I made a number of decisions. I decided to travel, sing and take up training as a full time professional. So for about 10 minutes you are all alone in this room and I really used this time very well. The decisions that I made in that room, I am living out even today.
I wanted to travel. I had visited Europe before with 12 coupons, as I have a huge network of cousins and friends. So travelling in Europe was not a problem. But I didn’t have the money to go to Europe. I ended up in Las Vegas, where my cousin gave me $50 to lose. I converted the $50 into nickels, I put in the first nickel and got a Jackpot of $800. The first nickel. I came out with $850 and I immediately stopped gambling.
There was my Europe vacation. I travelled on the Eurail, stayed on the train all nights. When I came back to India, I established myself as a trainer. The Taj have been one of my major clients but I have also worked with Leela and the Oberoi. Bombay has been a wonderful karmabhumi for me. I have worked with the Tata group. I have worked with the entire HTSC group. I have worked with pharma companies. Primarily, cancer has taught me to mean what I say and say what I mean.
Your life purpose is the ship that can take you through every storm and Rotary can give our live purpose. I have been going from district to district, I have spoken to the Rotary District of Mangalore, Orissa, Gujarat and I have been sharing this message with them. If you have any connections with any group of cancer patients, I would love to deliver this presentation to them. I have tried to make my life worth living and I have tried to make myself worth keeping alive. I am sure god is looking down and wondering ki isko rakhe ya nikale? In Bombay we always say Raasta de. So god keeps me alive maybe because I am worth keeping alive. I am contributing and adding value. I have travelled all over the world. My clients have been kind enough to budget me that I travelled from Hawaii to Australia and all memorable places. So I have indulged in travel, music, photography which is my hobby.
My son decided not to follow me in the learning and developing, that is his privilege but I took decisions. I said you have biological children and you have professional children. Hence, the 1500 trainers that I have trained, I freely share my materials and methods and help people to enter the learning and development profession. There are 1.3 billion people to be trained. We need millions of trainers.
By another interesting setting I ran into Vicente Fox, President of Mexico, while I was conducting training in his office without realising it. He invited my partner, Dr Shama Bhatt to move to Mexico. We said sorry, we can’t do that, we have commitments in India. He started the Academy of Human Excellence, which is my company, in Mexico as well, he is our business partner there. I tried to understand why this has happened to me and I am believing that I am paying off my karmic debt. I am not a smoker and I don’t work in a chemical plant or shop, so I think in my past life I must have done a lot of mischief which has warranted my coming into this life and going through what I have gone through. At the same time, I am 100 per cent sure that I must have done a lot of good because so many good people have popped out of nowhere to help me. I have a sense of humour, I have kept it alive and well.
On October 8th, 2018, I had my second biopsy which turned out to be benign but there were glands in my arm pit. Before surgery, the attendant gave me a hospital uniform which turned out to be a petticoat. In the OT, I asked the doctor, ‘What surgery are you going to do on me today?’ He said, ‘Why? We are removing three glands from your left arm pit. Why do you ask?’ I said, ‘Your people gave me a petticoat to wear, so I was worried what you would take off while I was under anaesthesia.’ He said, ‘No, don’t worry, I promise not to go below your waist.’ So, humour is one of the things that has helped me keep alive. I don’t know how it is going to end but I am going to make it a happy ending!
