When Sonali Bendre was diagnosed with high-grade cancer that had metastised she was sure that she did not want to hide her ailment from her thirteen-year-old son Ranveer. At an event in Delhi today, she revealed how she broke the news to him, what was his reaction to the news and how he became a rock to her during her painful ordeal.
Talking about her son, Ranveer, Sonali said, “He was on a school trip that summer. I could have sent him back home and everyone was saying, 'Let him come home, you deal with this over there.' But I said no, I need to see him. I need to be able to talk to him. That's the way Goldie and I have brought him up. We have always been very honest with him and the only thing we were hoping is that by not lying to him, he will not lie to us and be honest with us.” Sonali revealed that Ranveer is a “sensitive child” and if she had not been completely honest with him, he might “misconstrue it and come to all kinds of conclusions".
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Sonali Bendre and Goldie Behl with their son Ranveer[/caption]
Sonali revealed that it was her husband Goldie Behl who told Ranveer about her cancer. She said, “When Goldie told him... Ranveer is asthmatic... he went quiet. He took out his inhaler and took one puff. Goldie asked, 'Do you understand what it is?' He said, 'Yeah, I do. Mumma and me have read a book. Papa, it's going to be very tough on the family and we all need to be in it together.” She further added, “Children are resilient and they understand far more than we understand. Without him having said it, I felt he was kind of tiptoeing around the process. He had come to the doctor with me and asked a lot of questions. Suddenly, he became the guy who was taking care of me - 'Mumma, are you eating properly?'”
She went on to add, “But yet, there was something that I was feeling. When I insisted on him coming and he came for the chemotherapy, he said, 'Oh, this is not so bad.' I asked what he thought. He said, 'I thought there would be a lot of blood and tubes from your nose.' I knew somewhere he was holding himself back and he was so relieved when he saw that. I told him that this was a medicine that would make mumma okay so you have to welcome it. You have to be honest because the moment something is a mystery, it becomes a monster.”
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Sonali Bendre with son Ranveer[/caption]
Very often we like to hide life’s bitter truths from children but we forget that they have an innate sense of understanding about big things of life.
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