I have the hope and will to dream about work again: Mamta Mohandas

She symbolises courage, resilience and determination. Mamta Mohandas’s body may have borne the brunt and scars of her continuing fight for six years against lymphoma but she looks more ravishing than ever on the sets of Two Countries. More importantly, back in the limelight after a treatment break of 11 months, her mind is healthy and attitude positive. “I am playing an Indo–Canadian girl named Laya who is troubled because of disturbances in her family.”

Speaking about her cathartic plunge into work, she recalls, “We spoke about Two Countries nearly two years ago which is when I began my long treatment. I finally met the entire unit of Two Countries at the Montreal airport. The first six people I bumped into were the technicians and I experienced a heady rush and then I see the entire unit and believe me if I had two gigantic arms, I would have wrapped them around those 28 people. I cannot explain the happiness and the missing I felt. It is me who has been forced to stay away from this industry and that feeling is something which they may not be able to understand.”

Mamta is teaming up with Dileep for the fourth time and the bond and comfort level between them is evident. Mamta remarks, “The audience loves our pairing and our combination works like magic. On a personal front, Dileep and I are absolute buddies and we call each other by different names which I don’t even want to mention because it is that funny and shows how much we take each other for granted. Being the way I am I don’t really have a buddy relationship with everybody.”

Her industry friends are dropping in to see her every single day and she enthuses, “It’s nice that I am still loved and wanted.” Having packed several lifetimes’ experiences in her current life, Mamta has gained new insights. “In the last two years, I have matured so much as a human being. My understanding about life in general has deepened so much and definitely I wouldn’t have come this far without my parents and my spirituality. I have had very tough days and I have weathered all that. It has been psychologically more disturbing than physical. It had been difficult physically from the end of Ladies and Gentlemen to Varsham. I went through a lot of treatment and my body could not take it anymore and I was relapsing like no other and I was doing everything that was an option to get myself into remission.

It was physically exhausting to latch on to family, be a dependent and being extremely vulnerable because I felt everything was gone. I had to be fed and I did not really enjoy that. We had difficult days and most of this was in Chennai and there were days when I lost hope.”

She continues, “I am not living for the society nor am I making choices because I am falling short of something. No, I am making choices because that is what I want. Today being here back in cinema after a break of eleven months feels good.” Mamta is currently based in LA for her treatment and she states, “I am living a very real life in LA by myself which is a new country with no friends, no family and no one known from this life and it’s basically starting life from scratch and running my own home. My friends ask me, ‘You are in Los Angeles, you must be partying’ and I reply ‘No, I wear my high heels and go to a grocery shop and do my housecleaning and dusting but believe me that is so much fun!”

Mamta adds, “I started enjoying all this the moment I started feeling good health within myself. The treatment that I am on now is working for me. Somewhere there is hope that if I take care of myself, I will be able to come back to life. No one has taken anything away from me and I live in the moment and go with the flow. My mind is strong and my body is strong too and I hope that hope continues. I am in great care in LA and when I come to India I am pampered.” Before signing off, she says, “What this new medication has given me is the hope and the will to dream about work again and being around my family and friends.”