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How our suspicions of Lalit Modi made us cruel about his wife's cancer

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Damayanti Datta
Damayanti DattaJun 19, 2015 | 13:13

How our suspicions of Lalit Modi made us cruel about his wife's cancer

“Just spent the day at The Champalimaud Centre For The Unknown. The world’s most cutting-edge cancer research centre.” When Lalit Modi instagrammed this line on August 4, 2014, little did anyone know that it would become a cause célèbre nine months later.

But it did, when he swore in the midst of the acrimonious Lalit Modi-Sushma Swaraj-Vasundhara Raje swirl that it was the strange-sounding institute in Portugal with a “revolutionary” cancer treatment that had made it possible for his ailing wife to go party-hopping to the Ibiza island on the Mediterranean sea, within three days of her surgery. Unanswered questions hung over the nation. Scepticism did the rounds: out of hospital and off to Ibiza? Ha ha. Why Portugal? What is this "revolutionary treatment" he’s talking of? What kind of "surgery" did his wife have?

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With the IPL out of his hair, it appeared to many to be part and parcel of a typical Modiesque swagger, that usually leaves everyone guessing. And it was reinforced by the images of his “king-size” life that Modi was relaying beat-by-beat on social media: relaxing aboard super jets with photographer Alberto Korda’s classic on the Cuban Revolution, air-kissing supermodels and bratty billionaires, enjoying family weddings in Venice with aplomb or “#celebrating” his “angel” wife, the charming-smiling Minal Modi, on every chapter and verse on his Instagram feed.

But truth is usually brutal and unfair. Beyond all the bluff and bluster, there lurks in Modi’s glittering life an enemy that’s smart, relentless and hard to beat: Minal, who has had cancer, on and off, for 17 out the 24 years of their married life, is in the throes of an advanced metastatic condition, with the cancer spreading from breast to liver. “Due to my medical condition, I value my family life more than ever and I spend every spare minute with my family,” reads her affidavit.

The twist in the tale is: The Champalimaud Cancer Centre works on really cutting-edge science — "Translational medicine" — a rapidly growing field committed to discover new diagnostic tools and treatments. Champalimaud is one of five such centres globally, to offer the treatment Minal went through.

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No, she did not go through a "surgery". What she got was a type of "radio surgery"; Edge Radio Surgery, produced by cancer specialist Varian Medical Systems. It’s non-invasive, extraordinarily fast and beams targeted rays to tumours, with amazingly accurate precision. What normal radio surgery can do to cancers in 30-40 session, this brand new device can do in ten to 15 minutes. Especially effective in treating lung, liver, prostate and brain cancers, its USP is that it returns the patient back to everyday life right after a session.

India has something similar, but much simpler, CyberKnife Robotic Radio Surgery, at Apollo Hospitals, to treat cancers.

The limits of human imagination are expanding fast. An explosion of new research, technology and treatments is changing the way cancer is being understood and treated. There is hope for a cure on the horizon. And, hopefully, for Minal.

Last updated: June 19, 2015 | 13:13
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