Frederick Noronha
“Old age isn’t a battle. Old age is a massacre.” That’s how Philip Roth described it in his short novel ‘Everyman’. Roth strips away the romanticism of aging. He frames the gradual loss of health, energy, and peers not as a heroic fight we can win, but as an inevitable, systematic dismantling of our physical selves.
On the other hand, Jerry Pinto’s ‘A Good Life: The Power of Palliative Care’ tells us how palliative care can help reduce pain and suffering. As the jacket puts it: “Pain is fundamental to our existence, signalling what requires our attention. But while pain is inevitable, suffering does not need to be. Palliative care aims to reduce both the pain and suffering associated with serious illnesses.”
Of course, for many of us, this can be largely a theoretical issue. That is, till we or our near ones go through a long, debilitating or degenerative illness. In ten chapters, Pinto takes us from describing the problem, to telling us why healthcare needs an “interdisciplinary approach”, and touches on issues like the hidden cost of caring.
To begin, what exactly is palliative care? “Care that helps you be as pain free as possible [while dealing with a serious illness], allowing you to find joy and peace amidst your journey.” [p.vii]
Pinto looks at the palliative care ecosystem in India. Through his encounters with many in the field, the author moves the conversation from the fear of death to the importance of spending our evening years living with dignity and love, if possible. It collates stories gathered from patients, families and healthcare workers.
‘A Good Life’ also looks at the overlooked struggles of caregivers. It covers various aspects of suffering—this includes physical, psychological, social and economic pain. This book forces us to look at the world beyond the clinical, numbers-driven medical establishment. It lets us not forgot that there is also something called human resilience. The message is: pain may be inevitable, yet holistic care and collective empathy can radically alleviate human suffering.
‘A Good Life: The Power of Palliative Care’ takes us to meet so many players in the palliative field. It starts with Jerry Pinto writing: “I wish I had known about palliative care earlier.” In a sense, it is a journalist, light and is informative read.
We meet a range of people across its pages. Starting with Dr. M.R. Rajagopal in Thiruvananthapuram, the founder of Pallium India. (“I had an excellent medical education. We had the finest doctors teaching us. But never once did they mention pain or suffering….”)
There’s also Dr. Mary Ann Muckaden, who started the Palliative Care Unit of the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai. There are doctors from St John’s Bengaluru, other hospitals in Mumbai, AIIMS (Delhi), Guwahati, at the Cipla Palliative Care Centre in Pune, NIMHANS-Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Vizag, and the like. You too might feel that urban India is blessed with greater infrastructure in this field.
Then, there are groups like CanSupport for cancer survivors, CanKids KidsCan (the NGO in New Delhi), and the like. Nurses, social workers and counsellors are not overlooked for their role in this field. Support teams and volunteers have their own part to play.
We end up encountering unexpected places and quirks of history: opium and the British drug wars with China. Or, colonial-era laws on morphine in India (which came under not the health ministry but the Department of Revenue),
What is interesting is the number of people connected to Goa in the book. Undoubtedly one prominent name in this field nationwide is Dr. Luis Jose De Souza (Dr. Luzito), whose Shanti Avedna initiative stands not only in Bandra, Bombay, but even through its well known centre in Loutolim, Goa.
Cardiologist Dr. Eric Borges was another prominent name from the Goan diaspora community. There is Dr. Armida Fernandez, ex-dean of the Sion Hospital, Mumbai, who founded SNEHA, the Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action.
Dr. Ira Almeida, then project director of the palliative care unit at the South Goa District Hospital, also features. So does counsellor-cum-social worker Sameer Cuncolkar of the Goa Medical College and Hospital. Dr. Suchi Gaonkar of the GMC also gets featured, as is Dr. Anupama Borkar, professor and head of medical oncology at the GMC when this book was being readied for publication (Juggernaut, 2025).
We, naturally, encounter Jerry Pinto’s mum, grand-mum, sister, dad, and uncle on these pages… especially the travails they went through with the lack of palliative care when they needed it most.
After an introduction to people and a gamut of issues connected, Chapter 3 takes us to explaining ‘the science and art of palliative care’. (The term comes from the Latin word ‘pallium’ or cloak.) We are also told: Too often palliative care is seen as death-haunted, when it is, in fact, life-affirming. It aims at an improved quality of life not just at the end, but from the time one needs it till the very end.
On some occasions, social workers remind us, people are just at a loss to understand why they have to go through all the suffering, despite of their best efforts to lead “the good life”.
Incidentally, palliative care can reach us through the hospital, the patient›s home or at a palliative care centre. The concept of palliative care might actually be rather young. More so in India.
The foreword is written by Rumana Hamied, the former CEO of Cipla Foundation, and connected with the Indian pharma giant. Prior to her extensive work in philanthropy, she was involved in film production and was the producer of Fire in the Blood, an acclaimed documentary highlighting the systemic restrictions on low-cost antiretroviral drugs in Africa.
Rumana incidentally represents the third generation of CIPLA’s founding Hamied family; and is the granddaughter of the founder, Dr. Khwaja Abdul Hamied. It would not be wrong to say that Cipla–Chemical, Industrial & Pharmaceutical Laboratories–single-handed transformed India’s role in global medicine. Some might recall 2001, when Cipla›s Dr. Y. K. Hamied stunned the global health world by offering a triple-drug HIV cocktail for under $1 a day.
Cipla was among those who pressurised the Indian government to pass the landmark 1970 Indian Patents Act–which patented manufacturing processes rather than the drug molecules themselves. Thus, it broke Western pharmaceutical monopolies and birthed the modern Indian generic drug industry. Its founder, Dr Khwaja Abdul Hamied, belonged to an aristocratic Indian Muslim family from Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, while his wife, Wilma (Lubna) Derczanska, was a Lithuanian Jewish communist who escaped the rise of the Nazi regime.
Yet, its heavy reliance on a fragmented, anecdote-driven format occasionally limits its analytical depth. By filtering the complex realities of India’s broken medical infrastructure primarily through deeply moving, personal profiles of patients and caregivers, the text occasionally favours emotional resonance over a rigorous structural critique of policy, public healthcare gaps, and systemic economic barriers.
Readers seeking an actionable blueprint on how to scale healthcare reform or navigate specific medical legislation might find the book’s tone comforting rather than instructional. (At the end of the book, though, there’s a link to the Saath-Saath Helpline( 1800-202-7777 which is open Mon-Sat 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and could help you find palliative care nationwide.)
Yet not having clinical detachment might also be a good thing on a topic like this. It transforms a dry subject into a readable one. How to live and die with dignity, when possible. Often it isn’t, and can be painful.
