Reading Ageing as Lived
Experience: A Medical Humanities Approach to Kamala Das’s My
Mother at Sixty-Six
Maheen Rehman, Dr. Shachi Sood
ABSTRACT
The field of Medical Humanities directs great
interest and attention in studying the lived experience of diseases,
disability, suffering and care giving. It usually puts great
emphasis on understanding the subjective experiences of patients in
an objective and scientific environment. But Medical Humanities
gives comparatively lesser importance to explore the lived
experiences of ageing. The study of lived experiences of an aged
person, his struggles, challenges and experiences remains
comparatively unexplored. This same call is made in a Research
article by Martina Zimmermann titled An Agenda for the Medical
Humanities and Ageing published on July 9, 2025, in Journal History
of Human Sciences volume 39. In this research article, she argued
that Medical Humanities needs to expand itself to incorporate the
study of ageing narratives. This Paper aims to closely analyze
Kamala Das’s My Mother at Sixty-Six to understand ageing, its
emotional, physical, and psychological effects on the aged person
and on his caregivers and associates. This paper undertakes a
medical humanities approach to close read the poem My Mother at
Sixty-Six.
Keywords: Ageing, Medical Humanities, Kamala Das, Poetry, Ageing
Studies.
