The Art of Healing

Stumbling upon some paintings she made 16 years ago while being treated for cancer, Viney Kirpal is reminded of the meditative power of art-making, and its ability to help us get through trauma.

Fabric paintings by Viney Kirpal

Recently, when I was decluttering my house, I found two paintings neatly tucked inside a carved wooden box and it brought me to another time. I found myself transported back to an experience that, when it was happening, I didn’t yet know I could transcend.

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The oncologist seemed grave as he wrote down the results from my tests. I was tense. My sister held my hand. “I need to look at the reports today,” he told me.

Later, I dragged my feet to the lab like a death row convict headed for the chair. In some ancient communities, people confess their sins while touching a goat’s head before killing her. The goat is aware she’s going to be killed and digs her hooves into the ground, attempting to postpone the moment. Now I knew how the goat felt. My sister tried to cheer me up, but my thoughts were elsewhere. 

At the lab, they handed me the results; it was frightening to learn I had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

It was dark by the time the doctor met us. Studying the reports, he recommended mastectomy, cycles of chemotherapy and radiation. Then he scheduled the operation.

The surgery was uneventful, but I was not prepared for the aftermath. The post-operation secretions didn’t dry up easily. Daily, I visited the doctor’s clinic to get a new dressing, and returned depressed. The clinic was filled with breast cancer patients, like it was an epidemic.

At the lab, they handed me the results; it was frightening to learn I had been diagnosed with breast cancer…It was dark by the time the doctor met us. Studying the reports, he recommended mastectomy, cycles of chemotherapy and radiation. Then he scheduled the operation.

Associated with the secretions was the troubling memory of a friend whose secretions had continued for eight months, after which she became seriously ill. I’d gone to meet her when all of a sudden she felt liquid slosh below her armpit. She ran to the bathroom and returned looking white. Shaking, she said, “I must rush to my doctor.” She did not survive. The look in her eyes of a hunted animal still haunts me.

Every memory of those who died of cancer, every symptom in my body, was sufficient to box me in, emotionally. Fear of death and terror of the unknown cause anxiety and depression in cancer patients. Now I was one of them. While these days there are more good outcomes from innovative cancer treatments, and more people survive it than ever before, the word “cancer” is still the lion’s roar that petrifies the nimble-footed deer; the deer can outrun it yet it waits in terror, allowing the predator to pounce on it. There was a time I had traveled cockily from place to place for work and holiday. Now I was an unrecognizable silhouette of that bold self.

After the secretions, the trauma of losing a breast suddenly took over. The wound was raw; it would be a while before I could wear a prosthesis. I found it shameful to visit anyone or go to public places, and kept tugging my shawl closer.You lose a tooth and the tongue keeps probing the gum for the gap. You lose a leg and you experience ghost pains. I was going through a yearning for the before. 

Thorn-like blisters sprouted in my mouth after every chemo cycle. All I could swallow was boiled rice with sweetened milk. I wept, waiting for the nightmare to end. The day, my long tresses slid down, down, down and floated away into the water, I turned the faucet on full to let the noise of water drown the howl I let out. I didn’t want my mother to hear me bawl. My teeth and nails turned black, and my eyelashes disappeared. I was being shorn into a cipher, and gradually inching towards a predetermined end.

My sister brought me half a dozen comedies to watch.

“Sweetie,” she said, giving me the videos, “watch these and laugh your cancer off.” Wearily, I put them aside. I was in no mood for merriment.

At the Infusion center, I met a woman twenty years younger than me—37 to my then 57. Her cancer had recurred. We’d taken to one another and would talk sometimes. She was waiting for the nurse to start her chemotherapy. “I’m on my fourteenth cycle!” she said that day, her eyes averted. I blanched. Would her despair soon become mine?

The center, with its gloomy atmosphere and smell of medicines, didn’t suffuse one with hope. Wherever you looked lay patients. Sorrow, despair, and helplessness showed in their eyes. As I glanced around, I noticed a frightened 4-year-old. He was whimpering out of pain or fear. His anxious mother sat wordlessly by his side, looking at the granite floor. They were poor and probably receiving the treatment for free.

Art demands concentration and decisions about proportion and shades. The hues have to be filled into the sketches with utmost delicacy so as not to smudge the fabric. Outlining the figures needs a light touch. In that way, painting is like meditation; it needs the whole of you.

The boy should have been out on the playground with his friends, shrieking with joy. But, no, he was here, this innocent child, of all the places on a bed in an infusion center. As I watched him, I felt a cyclone of rage spiral against a meaningless disease that had the power to reduce us to pale shadows.

Viney Kirpal in 2022.

I had lived a healthy, independent life for years, flying about like a mighty eagle, but what of this baby? Surely, he deserved to live? The nurse had whispered to me, “He has blood cancer.” It made me miserable. The boy wasn’t table-high yet, but he was likely to be swindled out of life’s possibilities. Life is unfair—the thought challenged my perspective. What if you had died at four? I asked myself. Why have you permitted yourself to slip into gloom? What of your privilege? I felt ashamed that I had succumbed to the first hard test in my life. Gradually, my recriminations made me ponder the stories of the many who had survived breast cancer. Why had I ignored their statistics? Why had my thoughts been predominantly about death?

“Tough times aren’t the end!” I recalled my mother mother saying, and decided, I mustn’t believe I’m done and over with. I rued my defeatism. In my mind, I had lost before I had begun. I resolved that instant to peep outside of myself and find life. But how? How was I to extricate myself from the intricate emotional web I’d spun around me? How was I to discover light in the moment? It wasn’t easy, but I would have to engage my monkey mind with something rich and meaningful.

And then I thought of painting.

Art had fascinated me since childhood. Colors in a creative collage, like the orange and the pink of the sunset transforming the blue sky or the lake, elated me. I painted because I loved the act of fashioning colorful collocations. At 19 I had learned fabric painting and created for years until professional obligations demanded that I shove my hobby aside.

I returned to fabric painting to overcome the trauma of cancer and create normalcy in my life. “Trauma disturbs and distorts the way you think and feel,” writes Jamie Kelly, the Director of Y-Therapy, a drama therapist and counselor at the Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. “Sometimes the chaos of it all makes it too difficult for you to understand what actually happened….”

I bought the paints and some brushes. From my cupboard, I pulled out some pieces of unused fabric, cut them and traced human figures from old greeting cards my friends had sent me over the years.

Art demands concentration and decisions about proportion and shades. The hues have to be filled into the sketches with utmost delicacy so as not to smudge the fabric. Outlining the figures needs a light touch. In that way, painting is like meditation; it needs the whole of you.

Day after day, as I painted, my muscles began to loosen. My nerves, tight as guitar strings, began to let out. Painting picked me up and catapulted me into the terrain of magical shadows and rainbows.

I thought of the little boy often to remind myself, I have to rediscover life, until one day, I found the focus I needed. That day, I told myself, I’ve lost nothing because I have the power to create afresh.

Today, at 74, I’m in remission. My hair is long again, my eyelashes have grown thick, and my nails are pink. My teeth may have lost some of their sheen, but they’re no longer black. I’ve nearly forgotten I wear a prosthetic. I feel happy I turned to art.

“Creative therapy can help you balance the dark with the light,” Jamie Kelly writes. I didn’t know about this then. I had turned to painting out of sheer desperation to heal my bruised inner being. I had surrendered to anxiety out of fright. I had become an isolate, keeping away from friends and support groups.

I can’t recall the exact number of paintings I made, but stumbling upon two of them when I was decluttering recently reminded me of that time, when my virulent reactions to cancer and its treatments had stymied me.  

I looked at the painted figurines and observed for the first time that both were paintings of women—youthful, attractive, proportionate, and wholesome. Subconsciously, I’d been trying to capture the perfection and beauty of the human form. Transcending negative thoughts, I’d found tranquility, and determination to celebrate life’s completeness. Acceptance crawled into my heart and gradually infused it with love and gratitude. A little boy in the infusion cancer center had gifted me something precious, which turned me wiser and stronger.

The day after my treatment ended, I wore a fancy scarf around my head and flew to Chandigarh to train Rotary Club leaders.

…

Today, at 74, I’m in remission. My hair is long again, my eyelashes have grown thick, and my nails are pink. My teeth may have lost some of their sheen, but they’re no longer black. I’ve nearly forgotten I wear a prosthetic. I feel happy I turned to art. It helped me become more compassionate, and to transition from a difficult phase into a glowing life.

I’ve been able to span many fresh milestones since. Through mentoring, I’ve motivated others to attain their desired milestones with self-assurance. Helping them helps me, and reminds me of how possible it is to transcend even life’s most challenging experiences, and to emerge better for them on the other side.