‘Of all the things that are lost in Alzheimer’s, one thing that’s not lost is dignity,’ remarked Shuvendu Sen, a US-based award-winning physician at the launch of his book, The Fight Against Alzheimer’s (Rupa Publications), on January 15 at Oxford Bookstore, Park Street. Sen was accompanied by Piya Chakraborty, mental health activist and social worker (fourth from left), as well as members from the Bengali film fraternity — Surangana Bandyopadhyay, Sudeshna Roy, Riddhi Sen and Kamaleswar Mukherjee
All photos by Soumyajit Dey
‘My book is an emotional and practical guide for a disease that threatens to be a pandemic in the coming days. When it comes to combating Alzheimer’s, cure and care need to go hand in hand,’ said Sen, who described how Alzheimer’s can be anticipated through tell-tale signs, how caregivers need to be taken care of and how memory can be boosted in Alzheimer’s patients
‘This book promises to be a guiding light in the midst of the darkness surrounding Alzheimer’s. A lot of people reached out to me the moment they came to know about this book launch… Eventually, a lot of people with Alzheimer’s as well as those who look after them suffer from loneliness,’ said Piya Chakraborty
Sudeshna Roy compared Alzheimer’s with bhimroti and analysed how, in dealing with Alzheimer’s, ‘the stigma has always been there, but the empathy has been missing.’ Roy lamented the lack of deeper understanding about Alzheimer’s, since ‘we only talk about Alzheimer’s as a disease and how much of a problem it is to take care of the patients.’ ‘We’re scared of anything that we don’t understand. This book will help us to understand how to interact not only with Alzheimer’s patients but also with other humans,’ observed Surangana Bandyopadhyay
To conclude proceedings, Riddhi Sen added a different dimension to the discussion by expanding the scope of dementia: ‘We’re going through a time of mass political dementia or Alzheimer’s. People are willfully forgetting about their roots. Chaos and frenzy are taking over. For that, there’s no cure. But for Alzheimer’s, there’s still hope.’
