Minakshi Kanwar's latest book chronicles the experience of Alzheimer's

Heart wrenching conversations between a father affected by Alzheimer's disease and his daughter, talking about the need to take care of elderly people in our society affected by dementia is the plot of author Minakshi Chaudhary Kanwar's latest book.

In , A World Within: A remarkable story of Coping with a Parent's Dementia Kanwar, whose father has been suffering from dementia for the past eight to nine years now, has penned the book from a first person perspective having experienced the disease at close quarters in such a close relation. She says she means for this story to be read also as an awareness campaign.

"Usually when you write, you write for information, entertainment, and post provocation too, but this latest book is more than this. It is a kind of an awareness campaign. This book is more on taking care of parents who are suffering from dementia, and also how to handle elderly people," says Minakshi, who has been an active journalist in the past.

Dementia, says the author is commonly mistaken as memory loss but in reality is a disorder of the brain, a disease. One loses the ability to reason, to think, to communicate. There comes a stage when you even forget to swallow and even to breathe. "It is a very harrowing experience. It is a pattern this disease follows. You lose your memory, you become disoriented, your reasoning diminishes, and your thinking process slows down. Everyone goes through this pattern. Slowly it reaches a language problem; the patient would not remember common words. After a while, they even forget the close relatives. There is a pattern and that is why this book is special. Through this book, one will get to know how it is to experience dementia or the Alzheimer's disease," says the author.

She says that it is not only his family and close relatives whom her father has forgotten but he has forgotten many basic body functions such as urinating, as the brain has stopped sending the message to his body. In the advanced stages of the disease, patients forget to swallow even.

There is a social stigma which people have attached to the disease, neglecting it, alienating it and being ignorant about it. "Beyond the family, people have created a social stigma. They consider these people mad. So many families, they don't disclose the disease. They just want to lock these people in the house and forget about them," says Kanwar.

The author jokes that everybody in her family can now write a book, as they have become so accustomed to spinning stories for their father, every time he sees something or meets somebody which he cannot remember.

"We've all become writers in the family, anyone can write a novel, because when we sit with him, we are all lying, we are making stories to him. Everybody in the family lives with him, shares his hallucinations. What he has but is not aware of is that his loving family surrounds, pampers him, cleans him and is there for him," she adds.

The purpose of the book is to spread awareness and also to understand that time; understanding of the disease and condition of the patient’s pain along with patience is required to heal this disease. "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. 

"We need a national priority for this, a national policy. There are some policies but without any implementation. More money is needed for research purposes," says Kanwar about the disease which does not have any formal medication till date.