Manisha Koirala: Cancer Came Into My Life As A Gift

Actor Manisha Koirala, who won a tough battle against ovarian cancer, feels the disease came into her life as a gift as her vision is now sharper, mind clearer and her perspective realigned.

As she completes six years of being cancer-free, she shares her story – one marked by apprehensions, disappointments and uncertainties – and the lessons she learnt along the way.

In her memoir Healed: How

Cancer Gave Me a New Life, she talks about her treatment in the US and the care provided by the oncologists there to how she rebuilt her life once she returned home. Manisha says her book is a result of intense soulsearching and she has plunged deep into the dark, bottomless pit of painful memories and woven a story out of them.

“It has taken a lot of courage to confront and relive my experiences. But I needed to do so in order to become a true storyteller for the readers’ sake as well as my own,” she says.

She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2012. Manisha says for a decade, she had abused her body. “The poor lifestyle I had been leading made my body susceptible to diseases. Had it not been cancer, some other malady would have struck me. In hindsight, on a dark, lonely night, I still wonder what it could have been and whether it would have been better or worse,” the book, co-authored with Neelam Kumar and published by Penguin Random House, says.