Understanding The Language of The Mind With Books

Decades ago, my mother and I had gone to her maternal aunt’s (my grandaunt) home for lunch. We sat cross-legged on the floor in a circle, with all the vessels full of gastronomic delights placed in the centre. Suddenly, I heard someone ask from an adjoining room, ‘Tell me, what are you all eating?’ It was my grandaunt’s mother-in-law, blinded by diabetes, who was sitting on a divan in the adjoining room. She could only smell the aroma of the food, not see it. Just as I opened my mouth to tell her what the menu was, my mother’s cousin, my uncle, instantly placed his index finger on his lips and said, ‘Shh . . .’

Next, I saw my grandaunt pack a tiffin carrier with the food she had cooked. Meanwhile, my uncle went out of the house, rang the doorbell, and pretended that he had returned from a neighbouring restaurant with food for his grandmother. Placing his grandmother’s hand on the tiffin carrier, he said, ‘Baapamma, I have brought your lunch.' As my grandaunt served the food from the tiffin carrier to her mother-in-law, the old lady asked us once again what we were having for lunch. Though we were all eating the same food, my grandaunt rattled off names of other dishes to assure her that she had not been served the food cooked at home. ‘How strange,’ I remember thinking. My grandaunt whispered that this was a daily charade. Her mother-in-law had paranoid psychosis and suspected that my grandaunt would poison her food and kill her. Though aggrieved by her mother in law’s suspicions, my compassionate grandaunt had come up with this plan to calm down the troubled woman. That was my first encounter with a person with a different mind. I never forgot that episode.

Through the years, I saw among family and friends, beloved ones who struggled with deep anxiety, depression, and other disorders. I witnessed the distress of their carers, the stigma that the families had to fight, and the general misunderstanding and apathy that a mental illness was met with, as also the ostracism the person afflicted faced. The last few years, I have witnessed up close my brilliant mother’s descent into dementia, my own oscillation between compassion, resentment, helplessness and a plethora of other emotions as a carer who was now mostly confined to the four walls of my home. I have realised that shadows lurk around us all the time, that keeping your face towards the light is a lifelong challenge, that we are all vulnerable to the modifications of the mind and that we need a handy toolkit to keep the balance. Over the years, I have been reading books on mental health, intrepid essays and searing personal accounts of those who have boldly shared their experiences, and helped destigmatise mental illness to some extent.  

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Understanding The Language of The Mind

Urvashi Bahuguna’s collection of unfeigned, personal essays on mental health and resilience, No Straight Thing Was Ever Made (Penguin/Viking), opened the possibility for me to speak up openly about my own challenges as a carer. When All is Not Well by Om Swami (Harper/Element) reconnected me with yogic principles and practices that root us. Side Effects of Living edited by Jhilmil Breckenbridge and Namarita Kathait, a brave book about first-person life experiences and choices emphasised the need to reject the shame and blame that often accompanies mental illness, while the very title reminded me of how exposed we all are to life’s many blows. A Book of Light edited by Jerry Pinto, a courageous collection of intensely personal, empowering stories, brought me in touch with the terror, the love, the suffering, the pain, the darkness, the drama, the familial upheavals that are inevitable when one of our own is suffering. The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, an evocative account of coming to terms with addiction and discovering hope and a new life in the wild, reiterated the healing power of nature. Tristimania: A Diary of Manic Depression by Jay Griffiths, a powerful, exploratory account of the oscillations of her body and mind, of being swallowed by and coming out of a major mental illness, demonstrated how, while writing about something so dark and painful, language can be such a powerful tool. How to Travel Light: My memories of Madness and Melancholia by Shreevatsa Nevatia (Penguin Random House India) kept me glued to the author’s decade-long cyclical struggle with bipolar disorder.

These are books I leaf through on occasions though I have read them all once at least once. They have made me more empathic. The grit and spunk in the pages have astounded me. I feel honoured to have read these books that have left me wet-eyed but assured that love and light can see us through the darkest times.

Archana Pai Kulkarni is the Books Editor at SheThePeople. The views expressed are the author's own. 

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