South Indian actress and cancer survivor Mamta Mohandas took to her social media yesterday to speak about how she was dealing with Vitiligo, a disease that causes loss of skin colour in patches.
Vitiligo -- an auto-immume disease -- is caused by the lack of a pigment called melanin in the skin.
As always, Mamta - who’s known for her sunny and inspiring demeanour - broke the news in her signature spirited manner.
“Dear sun [emokji], I embrace you now like I have never done before. So spotted, I am losing color. I rise even before you every morning, to see you glimmer you first ray through the haze. Give me all you’ve got ... for I will be indebted, here on out and forever by your grace,” said Mamta.
She also posted a picture of her without any make-up, enjoying a cup of coffee. In the unfiltered images, you can spot the mild discolouration on her neck.
Mamta, who has acted in several Malayalam blockbusters including ‘My Boss’, ‘Ja Na Gana Mana’, and ‘Two Countries’, has seen life throw huge curveballs at her. She was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma more than a decade ago and has relapsed at least three times.
Like actresses like Samanth Ruth Prabhu and Lisa Ray, she has always been open about her health setbacks.
“Being a cancer survivor gives you such a different perspective on life. The way I treat people and the way I treat myself have changed over the last seven years. With me it [cancer] wasn’t a one time thing. I have aggressive lymphoma and it keeps coming back, so it requires me to be vigilant. Every waking day, there is a deep-seated pang of fear inside me. So I have to wake up reminding myself that today is a blessing and every person that I know is a blessing for me,” said Mamta in an earlier interview with Gulf News.
During the same interview, she had spoken about how her attitude and perspective had changed dramtically.
“My attitude is that we are not going to have any of this when we walk into the grave. Basically, live your life as if it’s your last,” said Mamta.
She’s also open about speaking about mental health.
“To me, depression was a real thing. It took met the longest time to understand that, we have an attitude like ‘sab kuch chalta hai’ [anything goes], laugh over it [mental health] or laugh it off and that it will all heal. It doesn’t happen that way. True healing when you are a victim of some trauma — be it an illness, rape — has no quick solution,” she adds.
Mamta, who grew up in Bahrain, is currently in a health and wellness resort in India as she revealed her Vitiligo diagnosis. Before this update, she was in Dubai working out in a gym and her post was a telling one about how fitness remains a big part of her life.
