Anurag Basu says he didn’t realise seriousness of cancer: ‘I sneaked out of hospital room for beer with Emraan Hashmi’

Filmmaker Anurag Basu was diagnosed with blood cancer in 2004, when his wife was expecting their daughter Ishana. He revealed how he took long to understand the seriousness of the situation while his friends and family were panicking around him as no line of treatment was helping him recover. Also read: Aamir Khan and Ranbir Kapoor to come together for Anurag Basu’s film? Here’s what the filmmaker has to say

In a conversation with Unfiltered By Samdish, Anurag Basu opened up about how it all began with just blisters and turned serious in no time. He said, “I got some blisters in my mouth one day. It was really big, like bubbles. My doctor got very scared after seeing my condition. They took my blood and reports, and I said, ‘I can’t do it now, I have to finish shooting. When I went to shoot, Mukesh Bhatt said, ‘pack everything up’. You can never expect him to say that, it’s impossible. When I saw my parents’ face in hospital, I got a hint that something was wrong.”

The filmmaker claimed he still didn’t realise the seriousness of his condition until Mahesh Bhatt came to meet him. “He put his hand on my forehead and he was shaking. He’s otherwise a very calm person. Even Anupam Kher came to meet me. After seeing those two, I realised something is wrong,” he said.

He further said, “I felt fine except for some headache and weakness. I even sneaked out of my hospital room for a beer with Emraan Hashmi and others. But my condition started deteriorating rapidly as no medicine was helping. My platelets were decreasing. The day I got scared was when my mom and dad stopped facing me in the hospital. It was scary as there was blood and blood. My internal organs were bleeding buckets. People kept coming to donate blood.”

The filmmaker was shifted from one hospital to another as there was no line of treatment that had any effect on him, until he was finally admitted to Tata Memorial hospital with Sunil Dutt helping him to get a bed.

Anurag is known for his films like Murder, Gangster, Barfi! and Jagga Jasoos. His latest directorial, 2020 film Ludo, was hailed by the critics as well as the viewers. It released on Netflix amid Covid-19 pandemic.