“…He looks at me. His eyes full of tears, ‘You will not understand.’
Something snaps in me and I blurt, ‘Dadoo, will you forget us?’ He looks at me in shock, ‘It is not possible to forget your children, one cannot forget one’s children even if one forgets everything else.’ I am deliriously happy.
But this turns out to be an illusion.”
Book churner Minakshi Chaudhry’s latest literary outing, her 13th, is a clear departure from her earlier works. A World Within is a two-year conversation between a dementia-struck father and his daughter even as he slowly and surely disconnects from his familiar former self. It is the heart-wrenching story of a helpless parent building bridges to nowhere on a despairing child’s watch. Told with her trademark humour, this time encasing her pain, this prolific teller of ghost stories, lovers’ litanies, and valleys afar, brings you an extraordinary tale about dealing with her father’s losing battle with the debilitating Alzheimer’s disease.
Though fictionalised, the book has been penned from an up-close and extremely personal perspective given the author’s own close-quarter view of a malaise that is socially scoffed off as memory loss. On the contrary, A World Within reveals, it is a brain disorder which arrests patients’ ability to reason, think or communicate. At one stage, they may even forget to swallow; worse, breathe. India has nearly forty lakh dementia-hit currently, with the number expected to rise exponentially in coming years as the elderly count spirals up to a whopping twenty crores. The book is in part a moving tale, in part an endeavour to bring attention to an affliction under-researched; it is treated with anti-depressants, vitamins and sleeping pills.
How really harrowing an experience it can be for the patient’s family is revealed to the reader through the author’s brutally honest introspection about the daughter’s reactions to her father. From the initial amusement to frustrated impatience, from ignoring, later avoiding and altogether escaping his repetitive queries to resigned acceptance. “At one stage you have to accept things as they are. And you have to do what you can do to make his life more dignified,” Chaudhry shares in a communication. Adding, “It is a big social issue that needs to be taken care of. There is an urgent need to educate people on how to care for suffering family members and, in some cases, even reverse the symptoms. In the book I have dealt with all facets of the disorder and hope it can be used as a guide on how to properly look after a loved one who has dementia.”
Note: This has earlier appeared in The Tribune.
Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu, travel enthusiast and the author of Adrift: A junket junkie in Europe is the youngest of four siblings born into an aristocratic family of Punjab. Dogged in her resistance to conform, and with parental pressure easing sufficiently over the years, she had plenty of freedom of choice. And she chose travel.
She was born in Shimla, and spent her formative years at their home, Windsor Terrace, in Kasumpti while schooling at Convent of Jesus & Mary, Chelsea. The irrepressible wanderlust in her found her changing vocations midstream and she joined Singapore International Airlines to give wing to her passion. She has travelled extensively in Asia, North America, Australia, Europe, South Africa and SE Asia; simultaneously exploring the charms within India.
When she is not travelling, she is writing about it. Over the past decade or so, she has created an impressive writing repertoire for herself: as a columnist with Hindustan Times, as a book reviewer for The Tribune and as a contributor to travel magazines in India and overseas. Her work-in-progress, the documenting of colonial heritage along the Old Hindustan-Tibet Road, is an outcome of her long-standing romance with the Himalayas.
