I’M LOSING MY MIND...

“My name is Padma Vadvani, and I’m hundred and twenty five years old”, she says as one walks into the room. There is suddenly a silent pause and sense of fear comes over her face as she almost whispers, “you won’t tell anyone, that I killed him right? I did not know the medicine I gave him, would kill him.” Wondering who she was taking about she replied saying it was her first husband Otaram Vdharam Vadvani. “I was forced to marry him at the age of eleven and the only good thing he did, was give me Hiru Jhagjani, my son. My name is Padma Vadvani, and I’m hundred and twenty five years old. You won’t tell anyone, that I killed him right? I did not know the medicine I gave him would kill him...

" I am dead, I'm am dead you know, because i can never feel my heartbeat.I know I am dead , I have no heart beat” she kept repeating for the next five minutes as I just sat next to her without uttering a word.

Alzheimer's disease afflicts more than 3 million people in India. With more people living into their 80s and 90s, that number will only increase. Tom DeBaggio wrote two books about what it was like to have early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He described it as "the closest thing to being eaten alive slowly."
Mrs. Padma Vadvani is a Sindhi, who was born on 12th oct. 1920, in Karachi. Her family decided to migrate to Bombay. After independence Karachi was separated into another country called Pakistan. There is no certificate within our country to prove her existence, her birth certificate remains in Pakistan.
She was diagnosed, with Alzheimer in the year1997 at the age of 77, and her decline has been clear in the intervening years. She now is 88yrs old. She no longer can have a normal conversation with anyone including her family members, and she gets very violent. She can hardly recognize anyone from within the family. Her children and grandchildren that give her such pleasure are now forgotten. A vague memory of her son Hiru still remains. She married at the age of 16yrs to Mr. Otaram Vadvani. They moved to CBD Belapur after marriage, to a place now called Artiste Village, and have stayed there ever since. He died out of a heart attack. After which she got married to Mr. Lakhan Timberwala. She has four generations prevailing. As the Alzheimer's disease increased, it became very hard for the family to handle her. She would try to run away in search for family and get very aggressive, as if she was kidnapped. Her mind would not permit her to remember; that the people she was with was her immediate family. She always stayed with her son Hiru, who finally decided to admit her in an aged care home named “Shushrusha-where others are cared for…” fifteen minutes away from Artiste Village.
The amazing that I found out while talking to her was how she is a little aware that she can't remember things, and that she has "lost a lot of recollections”. The awareness, seems the most cruelest, when she looks blankly into my eyes and says, “I don’t remember.” What might that feel like I wonder? It’s like having something at the tip of my tongue but not being able to convey it. It can be frightening to lose control of the body in any way.
It is especially tragic when it's the body's central control system, the brain. It is the target of an angry destructive process that science has been unable to tame or reclaim.
Memories tell us who we are and where we have been and they warm us and provide sheen. In later years, the old memories remain, to offer familiar anecdotes and the safety of the past. Memories are slowly disappearing from places inhabited for so long.
"Immortality, such as it may be, is contained not in what is dreamed or the secrets we keep; it’s how we are remembered by the ones we love.”- Tom DeBaggio

Mrs. Padma Vadvani oldest resident of CBD Belapur lived there for 72 years.