Jaya Bhattacharji Rose’s full article on the story on agents that went into print a few months ago. The last few paragraphs are my views. Read here …

It is uncanny how Jerry Pinto and I had so many similar flashpoints in our account of our loved one’s mental illness. Review of his book here.

Response to the topic for a blog magazine: Encountering the Other in Language/Place

The ‘other’ in place and language pre-supposes that place and language are located. To me they are not. I am often asked which language is my mother tongue. The answer is: I do not know. I was born in Rourkela, Orissa to Punjabi Sikh parents. My parents fought in Punjabi. My friends in the street played in Hindi. Our maids talked in Oriya. My school was in English. Each of those languages became part of my linguistic expression and experience. I laugh in English, feel sad in Hindi, count in Punjabi, and Oriya soothes my ears. As for the next question: where are you from? I again do not have an answer: as I said, I was born in a town whose official history started with a post-Independence steel plant and I have left a lot of places since then – Rourkela, Dehradun, Rajpura, Kapurthala, Bhilai, Hyderabad, Bangalore. Two of these cities have belonged to different states in my lifetime. Being dislocated and not being owned by a language, I have a self that is less defined by external markers and my obvious affection towards them. If all that I am not is the ‘other’ then, to make sense of living is, I need to find my ‘self’ and to confront my prejudices. To do so, I struggle with language and feel at home in the open pages of my drafts.

About a decade ago, I asked myself if my exploration of self would not best start by exploring my own family. I sought to write about my mother’s mental illness, about the care I received from our maid. Though my mother was my subject, I could not and did not want to be completely objective and clinical about her. In fact, the success of Sepia Leaves comes from it not being a cold, objective study of madness but by its being a warm, involved, subjective look at the situation in a family living under the shadow of Schizophrenia. It also posits the fact that a surrogate mother, the maid, actually connects the little boy to the world.

I said above that Rourkela’s objective history began with the construction of the Steeel Plant. That is how we construct our history as a nation – objectively. The reality is that the land for the Steel Plant was acquired from the tribals living in the region for generations, for hundreds of years. These tribals were uprooted, sent to the margins of the new town, made untouchable by the Nehruvian ‘temples of modern India’. Then when there is a crises in a family in this experimental nuclear society whose constituents have migrated from across the new nation, where one does not share culture or language with one’s neighbours, it is the tribal maid who comes to assist the young boy grow up. How can then there be an other in it? The othering is in our minds, in the language we employ, in the tools we use to sharpen our understanding and by which we miss out on the essential truths of the situation.

It becomes trickier in my next book Roll of Honour (due to be published September 2012). That is a story of split loyalties of an adolescent Sikh boy, studying in a military school during the wave of Khalistan, in the year 1984. The story deals with militancy at the national/state level and power hierarchies within school systems, and also with bullying and sexuality. The difficulty in writing Roll of Honour is dual:

a) The fact that the life at school is a sub-culture and almost complete in itself with hardly any reference to markers outside the school walls. It has its own system of punishments and rewards and valourizes its own notions of honour and disgrace.

b) That the language of the school is English but the language among students in a strange mix of Punjabi and their own code of speaking in which words are used more as tokens and less for what they inherently mean: cusswords which perpetuate and respond to a host of power equations.

The othering happens when I try to tell the story of an essentially rustic Punjabi experience in the English language. English is a language that the students learnt from textbooks and not from their environments. Each day of the last several years when I failed to articulate the angst of the protagonist I felt my own self was othering me, othering my understanding of what had happened.

One can write about the school as travelers wrote about Asia and Africa a few centuries ago by painting it in their own point of view, by orientalizing it. But here the storyteller is a native, himself not unfamiliar with what seems bizarre to an outsider. To write about a sub-group the writer needs to access what is being discussed within the sub-group in the language of the sub-group. If one chooses to access it like an erstwhile foreigner would to India or a grouping in India, the knowledge would remain that much bland. But if one wants to really access it, one learns to make it part of oneself, become a subject, and not objectify it. Quite like shop assistants in shoe shops all over Lajpat Nagar Central Market have their own unique register in which they fix prices for the shoes we buy. I remember the grain merchants from my childhood speak amongst themselves in a different language than what they used with the farmers who brought the grain. These language and registers are inherent in sub-groups which can extent to neighbourhoods, towns, cities, states, nations and also to religions, sects, businesses, occupations.

The only way I found out of it was to paint the picture as simply as I could. Use English not for its flamboyance or floweriness but for its ability to say less but to convey the essential. Whether it works or not depends upon the reception the book receives and how I feel just when the edits are over and it is going into print. That is when I will know if I could finally diminish or even erase my own sense of otherness from my own sense of self. I will know if I could move beyond dualities towards oneness and yet tell the story of the drama in the human heart.

Some time last month Dr Sarin asked me if I was interested in joining a panel to speak about depiction of psychiatric disorder in films and books and media. I agreed. Early this month he sent out the list of panelists and I find myself sharing space with Daman Singh author of Nine by Nine, Dr Parvez Imam, a psychiatrist turned film maker, and Syed Amjad Ali, an educational film maker who has recently made a short film on Schizophrenia called The Unreal Reality.

I read Nine by Nine. It is a brilliant portrayal of a mind losing its sense of ‘reality’ and how an illness runs through generations in a family. Daman Singh does not state the name of any psychiatric disorder but the depiction of her character Tara’s mind comes closest to Bi Polar Disorder. A rose by any other name or no name will smell as sweet. I have read a couple of other fiction books on psychiatric disorders including The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, written under the pen name Victoria Lucas, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg, written under the pen name Hannah Green, the novels of Adeline Virginia Woolf, the plays of Edward Albee. I have seen the movies A Beautiful Mind, Girl, Interrupted and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, where I like the book far more than the movie, and 15 Park Avenue.

In none of them except The Bell Jar is a psychiatric disorder depicted as it is understood by me – someone who has experienced it and seen it closely. From inside the mind which is changing its sense of the world. There is an element of drama in the fiction and films around psychiatric disorders which takes away the reader’s or viewer’s attention from the disorder to a tiny bit more fancy state of mind which makes the reader or viewer almost seek it as a better way of being. In some of the works the form takes over the content. For example, Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness, or Albee’s absurd theatre. I found Daman Singh’s portrayal and the last scenes of Nine by Nine most real to what I know of the disorder. She really gets into the mind of the character.

Ever since I have come to Delhi and have been making friends I have heard Dr. Parvez’s name in various contexts. I want to meet him. Amjad sent his film over. This film is needed. I wish I had seen it when I was dealing with Schizophrenia. I would have understood more, been better equipped.

All of us are meeting with Dr. Anirudh Kala at Gulmohar Hall, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, on June 19 at 7 PM.

You are invited. Come and participate in the discussion. I do not think we will bore you.

This Saturday I went to meet members of Roshni, the ACMI initiative. It was a mixed group of victims and care givers. As we started the session I realized that the notes I had made were not going to be very helpful.

These were real people and there was nothing new that I could have told them. A tragedy has befallen their lives and they come here to share their experiences. We must draw on those experiences, process them, strip them of presumptions, and make nuggets of knowledge that maybe other care givers can use. We did that by starting a conversation. For example,

1. When users feel the medication is not working we have to take into account that the pharmaceutical psychiatry industry is growing the fastest in the world today but they still do not have effective ways to find new drugs. There is no easy co-relation between chemicals and effectiveness because the results are not tied to figures. All they have are some subjective type tests and the users’ word, which also depends upon the mood of those who are trying the trial drugs.
2. Regular medication also has very hard side-effects. Most often we get angry with a victim for being lazy, but it might be that the medication that he or she is consuming is causing the blood sugar to rise and it is not as someone was saying ‘opium is mixed in drugs’.
3. The discipline of psychiatry has still not evolved enough for the practitioners to be able to make effective and absolute diagnoses. To reach a consensus that the same condition is called the same name by different people in different contexts. That is why it is important that the care givers make the effort to participate in the process of diagnoses and care.
4. Genetics plays an important role in transmitting the illnesses between generations in a family but it can again not be tied to exact percentages. Neither can we rule out the environment or individual behaviour patterns. Genes also work on the basis of whether they are active or dormant or repressive and so on.

We ended up with the question what is it that exactly happens in the mind of a victim. We had with us a lady who has successfully combated her schizophrenia. She said, ‘A strong iron door is locked on the mind. Whatever happens, washes over the person whose mind is locked. We do not have the right keys to open the locks. While the world grows around us, we live in the closed room.’

A very important point to consider, and this was the first time I heard it from a user. Thank you lady.

Over the last two months those of you who do come to this site must have been sorely disappointed in me. I have been so non-punctual about updating these pages. I was caught up with something else, my second book, which I will talk about later.

For now this is a notification on a talk I am giving at Roshni, a part of ACMI (Action for Mental Illness) initiative this Saturday, April 18, 11 AM at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, New Delhi. Link to ACMI.

I am no expert on human behaviour or on mental illness. All that has happened to me has been 35 years of living in close proximity to mental illness. Okay not so close, I was mostly away from my fragmented home where my mother was ill. But my mother was also in my heart. That way she was never too far. I grew up watching for her, her moods, her tempers, and my behaviour.

I also saw my father all these years, crumbling under the onslaught of mother’s temper. He felt guilty. I felt guilty for being their son and keeping them married. Under the combined load of all our guilt my father lost his mind towards his end (2003). I had been writing Sepia Leaves for about two years before that but the night my father passed away the format of the book revealed itself to me. I wrote Sepia Leaves to tell Papa that he was not responsible.

Roshni is an association of care givers of mentally ill patients. I want to stand in front of these care givers and listen to them telling me their stories. And I want to present to them the fact that they are not responsible for what has happened in their lives. In fact, they have already done much more than is their due. Come!

When I was a child and had to escort my mother to the doctor’s chamber, I believed that the psychiatrist was a magician and my mother would be altered when she came out of the session. I did not then know that the doctor was human, and ever since then I have struggled with psychiatry. My struggle also got me my friends. Dr Ajit Bhide is the kind psychiatrist in my article in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry special January 2009 issue. Dr Bhide not only helped me deal with my traumas and depression but also nudged me to write Sepia Leaves. Click here to see the article.

Yesterday, I cried when I got the email from the magazine and read the Sepia Leaves review in it. I cried because I felt that my parents’ struggle had finally been acknowledged by those with whom I had struggled. The circle of psychiatrists in India, the official magazine of psychiatry in the country, had finally found it worth while to listen/read my story and empathise with it. Click here to see the Sepia Leaves review by Dr Alok Sarin in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry – the official newsletter/mouthpiece of the Indian Psychiatric Association .

My work with psychiatry is not yet over. Some time in the future I plan to work in the area as a counsellor/activist.

Thank you Dr Bhide for not letting me slip away. Thank you Dr Sarin for reviewing the book. Thank you Dr Rao, the editor of the magazine, for putting it all together.

Yesterday, I suddenly got emails and calls from Bombay and New York because Bobby Sharma from Bangalore found my book at Crossword and posted the link on an internet group. The friends who contacted me belong to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Rourkela-Mates. An internet group on Rourkela. Wow. So nice to see us bond, its been active since 2002, almost when I started writing Sepia Leaves!

Here is my response:

Hi all,
thank you for inviting me here.

I did not study in REC and I did not do my Class X or XII in Rourkela. Still, I was born in Indira Gandhi Hospital and I walked the sector roads and got bird droppings on my shoulders in Rourkela One. I saw movies in Konark and Apsara and ate rasogullas in Ambagan and cholle bhature at Renu Menu. I once even sneaked into the plant lying under a seat in an ambulance. Dr Bose, the secretary to the CMO was our neighbour.

For personal reasons which Bains uncle’s son Harrit mentions I had to keep returning to Rourkela but it stays in my heart. I learnt Oriya in its streets, Hindi in its markets, Punjabi at home, and English in its schools.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine who works in PR asked me to find a Rourkela group and announce my book. I was tied up and am very glad you found me out. Today I was a bit surprised at Capt Raj’s mail, then Lalit called (Happy Birthday!), then Anand (I think) called from New York. Thanks Bobby for putting me up here. Yes, I owed it to all of you to tell you about the book earlier, apologies for not doing that. Sepia Leaves has a lot of Rourkela in it, it is a Rourkela story. Hope you like it; please let me know if you do not. I will keep reading news about you here, and participate when I can.

One of the reviews:
http://www.hindu.com/lr/2008/07/06/stories/2008070650300700.htm

PS: For propriety reasons I have changed some names and some minor details. Hope you do not mind the changes. I hope I have been able to capture the spirit of the city. Please respond if you wish to exchange views, and do let me know when you plan a get together in Delhi or Bangalore.
 

I read Sepia Leaves and I found it really moving. The reason I wanted to read it was because I wanted to relate to the protagonist of the boook. I had a mother who was schizophrenic and she is no more now. While reading the book I could see the past unfurl before me. Lot of incidents that have been potrayed have happened in my life too.

I apppreciate you writing this book and maybe the social stigma associated with this disorder can be partly, if not fully, removed. Once again, hats off for taking this bold step and as it is said in the book I too carry the genes of my mother.