Arvind Kejriwal launches Emraan Hashmi's book on son defeating cancer

Emraan Hashmi

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday launched actor Emraan Hashmi's book "The Kiss of Life: How a superhero and my son defeated cancer".

Emraan Hashmi. Pic/Satej Shinde

The book, which Emraan has co-written with author Bilal Siddiqi, tells about his struggle with his six-year-old son Ayaan's cancer treatment. The book has been published by Penguin Books India in three languages.

"I want to congratulate Emraan and Bilal for writing this book. More than that I want to congratulate Emraan over the battle that he fought with his son. I haven't read the book, but from what all I have heard, I would like to say that Emraan's son is a bigger superstar than his father," Kejriwal said at the launch.

"This book is about hope. When a cancer patient loses hope, his/her body starts to give up. All cancer patients should read this book. Not only them, even we should read it to defeat all the struggles that we go through in our day-to-day routine.

"As a chief minister, I feel Emraan had the money to take his child to Canada for treatment. But there are a lot of people in India who don't have money for treatment. In that case, the government needs to help them financially. I wish Ayaan was here as I really want to meet him, he added.

Born in February 2010, Ayaan, who is Emraan and wife Parveen Shahani's first child, was diagnosed with first stage cancer at the age of four in early 2014.

About his struggle with Ayaan's cancer, Emraan said: "It all started before 2013 when I was at the top of the game and had a lot of success in the film industry. On January 13 that year, me, my wife Parveen and Ayaan were having lunch at a restaurant and that's when we noticed peculiar symptoms in my son.

"My wife took him to the washroom and he passed blood in his urine. We as parents freaked out and took him to the nearest hospital. We couldn't see him go through physical trauma as parents."

After certain tests, Emraan found out that there was a "tumour growing on top of his (Ayaan's) left kidney".

Emraan said that though he was doing everything for Ayaan financially, his chemotherapy treatment created a kind of fear in him.

"As parents, we fought really hard for several months. Every time there was this fear that when chemotherapy is being given, everything is fine, but what will happen when it stops. I wanted to be sure that he'll be fine after that."

Emraan said he was now happy that two years after Ayaan was diagnosed with cancer, he was now cancer free.

Bilal Siddiqi, who was present at the launch, thanked Emraan for letting him tell about his personal life to the public.

"I want to thank Emraan sir for giving me this opportunity to write this story. I met him slightly over a year ago when Hussain Zaidi took me to his house. It took us around three and half to four months to do it," he said.