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TEN MONTHS after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, Lisa Ray says she is cancer free, has enjoyed being bald, and is ready to embrace her second home, India, with new vigour.

The Canadian actress and model, frequently named as one of the most beautiful people in the world by Indian and Canadian media, said she is feeling reborn after a stem cell transplant in January.

“ Multiple myeloma has hijacked my life for long enough and now I am going to take matters into my own hands,” Ray, 38, said.

“ It’s really been a kind of rebirth,” she said of her radical stem cell transplant treatment.

“ It’s like being reborn from the inside out. It’s a big cleaning from the middle of your marrow and spreading out.” Multiple myeloma is a cancer of white blood cells that attacks and destroys bone and which more commonly afflicts people in their mid- 60s. There is currently no known cure and treatment is focused on containment.

But Ray, born in Canada to an Indian father and Polish mother, chose to fight back, and chronicle her battle in a painfully honest yet humorous blog that has won her even more admirers.

The glossy- haired star of Bollywood movies Water and Kasoor , showed off her new short- hair look this week in Los Angeles.

Her most recent movie Cooking with Stella opened the Indian Film Festival in the US city as a benefit for the Los Angeles- based Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research.

“ My hair is coming back and it is looking awesome. I am loving it. It is the sleekest and most well- put together I have ever looked,” she laughed.

Ray recalled that she had cut off her long dark locks for her role in 2007 Oscar- nominated movie Water . But having her hair suddenly fall out while undergoing cancer treatment was a different matter. What was traumatic about losing my hair this time was I didn’t have a choice. But I have enjoyed being bald, she added, relishing the absence of shampoos, conditioners and hair- dryers in her life.

NEW HOME MUMBAI

Ray got her first modelling job after being spotted in India at the age of 16 while on a family vacation.

And India was the first place she headed for after her stem cell transplant.

“ It was the best thing I could have done,” she said. “ I am planning to divide my time between Mumbai and Canada now. I felt really re- embraced and re- connected with a world and people in that world that I had missed, and it feels right to start really reengaging and spending a lot more time there.” “ There has been some tension in my life, living and belonging on two continents. But now I have come to peace with it,” she said.