Veteran journalist and writer Ashok Nilakantan Aiyer, also known as TN Ashok, has turned two profoundly wrenching tragedies caused by chronic kidney failure into an engaging fictionalized memoir titled ‘Borrowed Time, Borrowed Hope’.

Ashok’s first wife Usha died in 2002 at age 46 after a prolonged and harrowing ordeal brought about by renal failure. Some years later, Ashok remarried but by a cruel quirk of fate even his second wife Samantha developed kidney disease and passed away at age 59 in 2025. 

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