Who cares for the caregiver? How women cancer patients battle housework, neglect and abandonment

There is not a dull moment when Tulasi Singh is around. She makes sure that the women’s hall on the fifth floor of the Gadge Maharaj Dharamshala, a subsidised hostel for cancer patients close to Tata Memorial Hospital Mumbai, is filled with laughter and chatter.

Tulasi is from Jalpaiguri in West Bengal. She has barely completed class 4 in school. “I was good at many things, studying was not one of them,” she tells me and goads me to have chai, reassuring me that it is good. “I am like the Big Boss of this place, I tell people what to do and they listen. I only do this to make sure everyone is happy, only then can you beat cancer,” she tells me, half serious and half joking.

Tulasi has been living in the hall for the last eight months since she was detected with breast cancer and she has dealt with her entire treatment on her own. Married at 22 she returned home within a few months, pregnant with her son. She never returned to her husband’s home because the couple had too many differences to reconcile. She lives with her “Bade papa and Badi mummy” – her uncle and aunt who...

Read more