'Life is worth fighting for every step, every minute, every second'

'I'm totally focussed on finding the right energies around me. A lot of the treatment is psychosomatic; as my mother keeps reiterating, if you think positive, positive things will happen to you.'

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In the first part of Interview Tannishtha Chatterjee, tells us how 'Cancer Has Made Me Shameless And Fearless'.

Tannishtha speaks about how difficult it was to break the news of her cancer diagnosis to her 70-year-old mother and her nine-year-old daughter.

"For days I kept my reports in the car so my mother wouldn't stumble on them," she confides, adding that she sent her daughter Radhika to New York with her sister for four months. "She went swimming and learnt how to play the piano instead of being home in Mumbai and feeling insecure looking at me at a time when I was at my most vulnerable."

You were working on Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, revolving around the rape and murder of the daughter of a prominent businessman. Also, Pastt Tense in which you play a rape survivor who, after years, reconnects with her son whom she was forced to give up and who now wants to seek justice for the wrong done to her. Interesting subjects, what's the status quo on them?

Ek Ruka Hua Faisla is complete and Pastt Tense is in post-production.

Interestingly, while working on Pastt Tense, I got chatting with my costar, Sharib Hashmi, and discovered that he is a caregiver to his wife, Nasreen, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2018.

Around that time, I too had been diagnosed with stage 4 oligometastatic cancer and after discovering that we had gone through the same journey, Sharib through Nasreen, we decided to collaborate on a two-actor play.

It's about cancer, a musical comedy which we have written together.

Leena Yadav, the director of Parched, will be helming it.

It's great to see you so active and enthusiastic about your work despite your health concerns.

(Sighing) Oh, I have lost some projects since being diagnosed.

I was supposed to shoot with Bharat Bala, but I had to opt out because of the sudden health crisis.