Writing helped me in my cancer battle: Singh

What do most of us do when we fall seriously ill? Stay in bed and hope to get pampered, right? But when author Rachna Singh was diagnosed with breast cancer, she penned her latest book Band, Baaja, Boys. “I was diagnosed with breast cancer just after the first chapter and writing this book kept me positive,” she says.

“Writing is an escape mechanism for me, where humour conceals all the struggles of my life. It’s like reading an Enid Blyton book and getting transported to another world,” says Singh.

The book, a work of humour, revolves around Binny Bajpai, a 20-year-old Allahabad resident, who has a queue of suitors lined up for her. “Binny, a Hindi medium student, feels inferior as her English isn’t as good as that of girls of English medium schools,” says Singh, adding, “I was in an English medium school. So it was easy for me to draw inspiration from the girls I saw around. That’s why I used Hinglish in the book, as it’s more relatable.”

Singh, who has authored four other works, is also a stand-up comic and mimicry artist, apart from being a psychologist and Human Resource person. “I inherit humour from my father. He would mimic people a lot, and withih age I realisedlid thath I’d d become like him. Now I see that in my son too,” she says. “If we can laugh and make other people laugh, there is nothing better than that. Cancer has made me thankful for these little joys of life.”