Dementia or was it poverty?

Dementia or poverty?

I kept a journal during the first year. I did many things that year that I never did once I got a job. Like keeping daily accounts, which I did because my mother used to do that. Every night she would sit at the dining table and fill in details in her book. Some years ago, when I was in India, I went through my late brother’s collection of “stuff” to see if I wanted to keep anything.

One of the few things I brought back with me was an Accounts Book of my mother’s. It had all kinds of details like the price of milk - of no earthly use one might say, but it gives one an idea of what life was like. Like, in my biography of C.V.Raman that has just come out, I have an anecdote of how he used to jokingly say he was born with a copper spoon in his mouth since his father earned the "princely sum" of ten rupees per month. But just how far would ten rupees have gone? may be a long way, considering a rupee had sixteen annas and each anna had twelve thambidis and the cost of many daily needs was in thambidis and not even in annas!

So also with the account book I kept for the first two years. I have interesting trivia, that in 1968 the Free Press subscription was a dollar for two weeks, that a haircut cost $1.50, and that eleven gallons of gas cost $5.00, and that is an imperial gallon, 4.5 litres!! We can compare these with our present rates and set it against our income then and now to see the real price of daily necessities.

Here are two pages from the journal I kept in 1966, which are not useful at all, but do give an idea of a new immigrant's observation of winter and of how ignorant we were, still are, about dementia. Note little details, like I say "drawing room" as one does in India, instead of "living room."

1^st to 4^th November, 1966

I looked out the drawing room window this morning. I was thrilled. A colourless coat of ice had formed on the river. Winter was here.

First, the October sun had seared leaves to the ground; men came in little machines and ground the yellow, dry leaves and the wind carried away the dust of whatever the machines had not picked up.

The wind carried away the ice crust too.

The sun usually rises at the corner of Wellington Towers, and the bleak blackwalled glass dome of St. Mary’s Academy flashes back the red ball and I could see the sun reflected on to my eyes. Today there is no sunrise and no sunset, only a luminous cloud moving across the southern horizon.

The next day the ice crust was not colourless but white. But the river still reflected light by night.

The next day the crust was thick and white except for the far edge and near the bank. Nor sun nor wind shall bring to life those petrified ripples and currents that streak whiter against the white surface of the Assiniboine.

Tuesday, 8^th November

This afternoon I went for a walk. The sun was shining brightly, the snow piled high on the sidewalks. I went down McMillan thinking I’d walk down Dorchester and buy buttermilk on my way back at Mini Mart that is at Dorchester and Lilac. I kept on but met neither Dorchester nor Lilac, so I turned off towards Corydon, where I turned left, resolving to return by the familiar roads now that I had my coordinates, for the cold was seeping into my snowboots., through my leotards on to my toes. We’d just have to do without buttermilk for the time being. I met an old lady with some grocery bags in her hand.

“Can you tell me where I am,” she asked me.

“This is Corydon, and that is Arbuthnot,” I said, “Where do you want to go?”

“Oh dear, oh dear. I’ve come too far, I think,” she said, and the way she said it sounded to me like something out of Alice in Wonderland. She was a non-descript old woman, in a faded blue coat, who had a rather well-featured face. Her mouth looked shrunk as though she had no teeth, but she did. Her dentures were yellow.

“What is the address you are looking for?” I asked.

“Lilac,” she said.

I told her Lilac was a couple of blocks away, and pointed out. “Ah yes,” she said, “I believe you are right, ah yes,” and she started walking in that direction. I decided to join her.

“They steal,” she said, “where I stay, they steal little things every day. I don’t mind giving, but they steal and that I don’t like.”

I was surprised. “That’s too bad,” I commiserated.

We walked on.

“Cold, eh?” she said.

“Oh yes,” I said.

“I had to wear my cotton coat,” she said. “They stole my fur coat yesterday.” Indeed, she was wearing only a cotton coat, a blue one with minute checks. She must have been quite cold.

“Do you live in an apartment?” I asked, wondering if she lived in an old folks’ home.

“I am sick and tired of Leila,” she said.

“Leila?” I asked, surprised. Leila was a street in the north end of town, or maybe it was the name of one of her friends.

“Yes, Lilac,” she said peevishly. “I am sick and tired of it. We are leaving. We’ll go back to Winnipeg.”

By then we had reached Lilac and we parted ways.

Reading this now, I know how ignorant I was, I guess we all were, about the ravages of dementia and Alzheimer’s.