What started as a personal journal of the author engaged in care giving to his sick, aged mother, evolved into a dialogue and contemplation on life and death, ageing and decay, faith and skepticism-subjects that have intrigued and mystified humans for ever. Through flashbacks into the past and the existential challenges of the present, the dialogues progressed to the final frontier.
This collection of poems captures the poignancy of ageing, the challenges of care giving, the fear of losing a beloved parent, the inevitability of death and the visions of the hereafter.
KL Chowdhury is a medical professional of repute and an award winning writer, with three published anthologies, a travelogue, and two short story collections. His collection of short stories Faith and Frenzy has been widely acclaimed. His poems, essays, memoirs and short stories have appeared in various national and international journals.
There is one question my elderly patients often ask: Is ageing a disease, decay, or state of mind? I give them a stock answer: It is all the three together in different proportions in different people.
They say you are only as old as you feel and those who feel younger tend to live longer. However, we also know that with advancing years there is a slow decay of every system in the body-a senescence of the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, and other organs including bones, joints, muscles, and the skin and its appendages. We start losing function of our organs and systems at an annual average of about one percent beginning with the fourth decade, or thereabouts, in a slow and invisible process that generally goes unnoticed because the body is provided with ample reserves and has amazing potential to acclimatize to the changes and challenges.
Some people age gracefully. They stay independent and retain their mental faculties till the very end. They retain their charm and negotiate the problems of ageing with dignity and equanimity. But, there are others who fall prey to disability, disease, and dementia. They tend to forget people and places, time and spaces, words and speech. It is these less fortunate ones who need care and compassion till the very end.
As a medical professional with five decades of experience, I have been grappling with the manifold problems of ageing in my patients-stroke, failing heart, parkinsonism, dementia, asthma, crippling arthritis, depression, terminal cancer, and other end-of-life situations. I have been intimately involved in helping them tide over the many crises as they battle through the last lap of their earthly sojourn. But, when it came to my own mother, I experienced the problems in an altogether different light. The difference between issuing instructions to the caregivers and being a caregiver, between the practice of treating a patient and the challenges of treating one's own parent, became starkly clear.
Mother had been enduring numerous challenges of life with stoicism, courage, and grace. She had a long history of infirmities-impaired hearing from a long-standing otosclerosis; residual right facial paralysis following car surgery; postural and gait disorders after surgery for a spinal tumour; anxiety and depression from cumulative factors including our forced exodus from Kashmir; spastic colon and irritable bladder.
Despite the problems, she retained her mental sharpness and lived a happy and contended life, taking regular strolls in the garden, reading the Hindu epics, watching TV, doing her daily puja, chanting mantras, reciting devotional poetry, doing ordinary chores, and taking interest in family matters. Endowed with a fantastic memory, and being a born story teller, she loved to communicate and participate in family discussions. She took great interest in current affairs, wrote letters to her kin, and made regular phone calls. No infirmity, no handicap, no pain could dampen her urge and enthusiasm for life. She had a great fund of inner joy and peace, and had struck a perfect equilibrium and equipoise between her inner and outer world.
Book's Contents and Sample Pages
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