Dementia In British Asian Communities

Same Difference

When BBC presenter Rajan Datar learned that his father had dementia, it led him to discover that a combination of stigma, language barriers and cultural differences were stopping many in the UK’s South Asian community from seeking help. This is his experience.

My father Sudhakar is a friendly, genial man with a mischievous glint in his eye and always keen to share a joke.

He turns 85 in February and says he has enjoyed a fulfilled life. He was one of the first wave of immigrants from India and Pakistan who came to the UK in the 1950s.

But in the last year or so, he and my mother Hema have noticed certain changes in his behaviour.

He went through a phase of feeling very apathetic and unsociable, which was unusual for him as he has always been a very active and gregarious person.

There have been times when he…

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Zero: A Review

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After the disappointment of 2018’s AndhaDhun, in which a blind pianist is revealed to be faking his disability, Zero has restored my faith and pride in Bollywood’s ability to represent disability positively.

Shah Rukh Khan is brilliant as Bauua Singh, a man of restricted growth with more than enough of everything else! His search for a wife leads him to Anushka Sharma’s Aafia, a space scientist with Cerebral Palsy- the disability I have had since birth.

They fall in love, sing a beautiful song, and yes, even have sex. However, on the day of their wedding, Bauua runs away to participate in a competition to meet a movie star, Babita, played by Katrina Kaif.

When he eventually realises that he truly loves Aafia, he finds her, and his baby daughter, in New York, where she is training human volunteers for a voyage to Mars. Over another beautiful song and several…

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