President cheers up cancer patients

Erode (Tamil Nadu), Dec 18 (UNI) ''Who will turn against when God is with us...I prayed to God and He listened. The God has allayed all my apprehensions...A Divine light and relief pierced into my body and brought instant relief to my body and soul.'' This was the prayer offered by President A P J Abdul Kalam to cancer patients, after inaugurating ''Imayam'', a home for the terminally-ill cancer patients here this evening.

Addressing the gathering, the President, sharing the experiences, he had with three of his own friends afflicted with blood cancer, said hope was life and one should not get disheartened by such diseases.

The President surprised the audience when he narrated how his friends, an industrialist, a writer and an artist, were leading a normal life, despite having blood cancer.

Displaying tremendous will-power, the industrialist, like a warrior, says that he would fight against the cells, which caused the disease, while the writer takes solace in writing books on spiritualism and literature.

The artist, he said had stunned him with his beautiful paintings amid his suffering. When he invited him to the Rashtrapathi Bhavan, the artist came out with a beautiful painting of the Mughal Garden.

he recalled. ''I learnt from the three that we could alienate the disease by sheer will power,'' the President said.

Dr Kalam said when he met a 25-year-old youth, affected by blood cancer, the latter quoted his physician having said that he would live only for a few months. ''But I told him that God alone decides how long one should live and presented him a book ''Celebration of cells.'' After narrating the success story of his three friends, the President offered his prayer for the patients and wished them the best.

UNI XR/WS VD KP1956