I often recall and share Lonely Planet’s book, The Best Moment Of Your Life: 100 Life Changing Travel Experiences, chiefly for its first essay, Discovering life on the bank of the Ganges, by travel writer Matt Phillips in which he describes his visit to Varanasi, where while witnessing funeral pyres along the river, he suddenly had a big realisation: “The biggest tragedy wouldn’t be dying – it would be not actually living.” After all, when we encounter death closely, it wakes us up, bringing the clarity of life’s journey – what really matters, what doesn’t.
Not many years ago, when I got a chance to interview Bollywood actor Manisha Koirala for her book, Healed: How Cancer Gave Me A New Gift Of Life, at a literature festival, as the title suggests, she shared that her fight with the life-threatening disease completely changed her. “It made me humble and kind. I began valuing everything and everyone around me. I must admit that before cancer came into my life, I was lost in the glamour of Bollywood, where real happiness was absent.
