Walter D’Souza - Answering Cancer’s Call with Learning
By Anisa Fathima with inputs from Leo D'Souza
Mumbai, Sep 3: Imagine going through life day in and day out with the knowledge that very soon it's all going to end.
There are only two ways to take it – give up all hope and go into depression waiting for death to consume you, or take death by the scruff of the neck and dare it to rob you of your life.
Walter D’Souza, an employee of the Indian Railways, chose the latter.
Almost 10 years ago, he was diagnosed with brain cancer. The world came crashing down leaving him completely devastated. He went into depression for some time and there seemed no hope on the horizon. But then, he realized there was no point in wallowing in self pity or living in constant fear of death. His family was very supportive and helped him come out of the sorrow he had plunged into. It was time to gather the shattered pieces together and build anew a life full of courage and an indestructible faith in God. Says Walter, “When I did not blame God when He gave me a good job, how can I blame Him now?”
It often happens that we find new avenues of life in the most unexpected situations. It is also true that a person’s strength of character is best tested in a crisis. Walter D’Souza, instead of giving up, chose to capitalise on what life had offered him. While most people in his shoes may have seen life as a lost cause and given into gloom, Walter went back to studies – he did his LLB, following it up with MA in political science from Tilak Vidyapeeth. Not satisfied still, he decided to pursue a correspondence course in journalism. And all this despite knowing that he was suffering from a terminal illness. To Walter, it is simply fulfilling his interest in studies. For the rest of us, it is courage. And steely determination.
Nor did he give up his work at the Indian Railways. He is the head travelling ticket examinee at Andheri, Mumbai, and though his illness is catching up with him, he still goes to work with the help of his wife Violet. His daughter Aparna is in tenth standard, and Violet has given up her job to look after her partially paralysed husband. His deteriorating health forced him to take a break from the journalism course, but he continues to battle every day, defying death and fate.
A two-time chess champion, Walter nonchalantly says that death comes upon everybody – there’s not a single person who can escape the jaws of death. Already having experienced the surgeon’s knife three times in the most risk-ridden part of the body, the brain, Walter’s life over the last ten years has been a series of chemotherapy sessions and numerous visits to Bombay Hospital neurosurgeon Dr K Turel, of whom he talks with great admiration and gratitude.
His cancer is in the third stage, and doctors have given up hope. They say he has just about a couple of months to live, but Walter continues to wear his trademark never-fading smile, a smile that reflects his optimism and never-say-die attitude.
And what’s even more commendable is that though his life may be taken away soon, he has decided to bestow the gift of life on others. He has pledged all his organs for donation so that not only will it benefit those battling with life, but that he will continue to live in this world in some way.
Ask him what advice he would give to other cancer patients, and pat comes the reply, “Accept the fact that you have cancer and make optimum use of the time you have in hand. Try your best to fulfil your objectives in life, and you will not be afraid of death.”
American writer Ernest Hemingway in "The Old Man and the Sea" made this famous statement: “A man can be destroyed, but not defeated.” That’s perhaps the best way to describe Walter D’Souza.