forgetting

Between Memory and Forgetting: Representation of Identity and Family in Thanmathra

This essay examines the interplay of memory, identity, and family as portrayed in the film Thanmathra (2005). Serving as the primary text, Thanmathra provides a cinematic exploration of the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, particularly highlighting how memory loss disrupts personal identity and familial bonds. Thanmathra (English: Molecule) is a 2005 Indian Malayalam-language drama film written and directed by Blessy and starring Mohanlal, Meera Vasudevan and Arjun Lal. Based on Padmarajan’s short story “Orma”, it portrays the effects of Alzheimer’s disease on the life of Ramesan Nair (Mohanlal) and his family.

“I was disconnected from my emotions, like a hand severed from a wrist”: Trauma, Plasticity, Unprecedented Identities and Coolness in Alex Michaelides’ ‘The Silent Patient’ – S. Kirubakaran

The last few decades have seen an increase in the research on human memory. Human brain is an extremely complicated and a unique device among the living beings. The topics covered are Plasticity, Unprecedented Identities and Coolness in correspondence to trauma, which are depicted in Alex Michaelides’ novel ‘The Silent Patient’. The characters in the novel go through various psychological conditions. Literature is an important field of introspection on memory studies. A fiction is an amalgamation of realities and possibilities. The articulation of absence in a fiction makes it a cognitive medium, for the interplay of Memory Studies and Medical Humanities. A rigid understanding of remembering and forgetting is achieved through a critical study.

Remembering and Forgetting: Representation of Alzheimer’s Disease in Avni Doshi’s Fiction – Angel Maria Varghese

The Girl in White Cotton is a debut novel by Avni Doshi, published in 2019 that explores the entanglements between memory, shared trauma and caregiving. The plot follows the fraught relationship between a mother and daughter, Tara and Antara. The daughter must care for her mother, as the latter is suffering from memory loss caused by the early onset of Alzheimer’s disease.