Man(jrekar) vs Cancer

I used to love smoking. But you can either love life or love smoking," says Mahesh Manjrekar. The director-screenwriter-actor was diagnosed with urinary bladder cancer last year. "I would go to the loo a lot," says the 63-year-old. "First, I would get up twice at night and then every hour. It was horrible. Initially, I was medicated for an overactive bladder [characterised by frequent and sudden urge to urinate]. Then, I saw blood." A cystoscopy revealed a high grade cancer. Just two years ago, he was celebrated for being at his fittest, losing 30 kg.

"Fitness is more important than success," he had said then.

Cut to today.

"The diagnosis didn't surprise me. I wasn't optimistic when I was told to undergo cystoscopy; I was prepared for the worst," says the director who has worked in Marathi, Hindi, Telugu, and Bhojpuri films. Among the remedial options was removal of the bladder. "One alternative was wearing a pouch under my clothes, which would store the urine [an Ileal conduit], but I opted for the neobladder," he says. Manjrekar had to undergo four gruelling cycles of chemotherapy before the bladder could be removed. Not one to rest, he shot Antim: The Final Truth in between the chemo sessions.

A visibly frail Manjrekar made his first public appearance after surgery in October last year, for the trailer launch of Antim. Pic/Shadab Khan

"They removed the bladder and created a new bladder using a part of the intestine. It was a major surgery but to be honest, I was fine," he says candidly. "I lost my hair but its grown back thicker, so that's a positive…"

In his movies, Manjrekar's lens has never shied away from looking at the unpalatable bites of reality; and he's not about to blink now. Whether his humour is a coping mechanism or a zen response is up for debate. "I treated it like any other [minor] illness and nobody in the house also made a fuss. We hardly mentioned it," he shrugs. The recovery process was a challenge. "I have never been bed-ridden," he says. You can hear the impatience in his voice even at the memory of it. "And here I had to be confined to one room for two months!"

On his first public appearance post surgery, for the trailer launch of Antim, he looked visibly thin. "I lost my appetite, due to which I lost a lot of weight, but I slowly got it back again. In fact, today, I am a little worried about the excess kilos," he says. "[Two years ago] I would exercise a lot. I was a healthy 74 kg. I gained weight before the surgery because it was needed, but post it, I suddenly went from 84 kg to 70 kg. Today I am 86… [I think] this worry never goes, earlier I was worried about losing weight, now I am worried about gaining weight," he says. There's that chuckle again. But why the delay in diagnosis?

"I was just being complacent, thinking nothing will happen to me," he says, "I should have tested for cancer long ago, but assuming it to be an overactive bladder, the cancer grew for almost two years. Perhaps if I had gone then, we would have caught it at a nascent stage and wouldn't need to remove my bladder. But as they say, don't cry over spilt milk…"

Manjrekar has the self-awareness of a life-long smoker; and the regret that comes with it later in life. "I used to smoke a lot, and it does affect your bladder," he says. "I advise people to not smoke. The minute you face any difficulty in your elimination habits, go see a doctor. Don't diagnose yourself with Google." It's been a year since his surgery, but he doesn't bring the cancer up in interviews. "I feel actors with cancer receive a lot of attention and sympathy from the public, even though there are many [ordinary] people who are undergoing similar challenges. I didn't want any of that sympathy. I didn't want to glorify cancer," he says matter-of-factly.

After Swatantra Veer Savarkar, Manjrekar's next Veer Daudale Saat is based on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj's military commander Prataprao Gurjar. It's slated for release in multiple languages.

Does he have any plans to come back to politics? "I would love to, but I don't have time," says Manjrekar who fought the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections from Mumbai North West as an MNS candidate, but lost. "I have my own ideas, but in politics, once you join a party, you have to abide by their thinking even if you don't agree with it, which I can't do. I would have to start my own party, which is a bit difficult, so I will just stay away from it."

There are a few niggling complaints, which a bi-annual scan looks into, and then there is cystoscopy every three months to see whether everything is in order. And it mostly is. "I need a small corrective surgery, but we'll decide about it in July, when I complete a year [since the bladder removal]," he says. "Nobody is immortal. A young boy died of a heart attack the other day, so what do I have to complain about?"



Recently, actor Mahima Chaudhry, who starred alongside Sanjay Dutt in Manjrekar's Kurukshetra, observed that all three of them had cancer. "I should have spelled Kurukshetra with a ‘C' and not a ‘K'," he laughs.