AFRAID TO BE HAPPY.

Dear Itu,
This is the beginning of my book.

"Electric shock!?" asked Neha terrified.
"Dear God, please don't make me go through this,"she prayed. She was in unbearable pain and she couldn't take any more.
Dr.VSR Raman spoke reassuringly. He was a renowned psychiatrist.
"General anesthesia," he said, looking troubled.
Neha was relieved. She sank back against her chair and breathed freely. She wasn't very tall, five feet. The lines of fatigue and hopelessness were etched on her face. A pleasant but ordinary face, now unrecognizable.
She suffered from Manic Depression, commonly known as Bipolar Disorder. It can be caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. The patient is ecstatic when the chemical is in excess and sinks into an acute meaningless depression when it is in deficit.
Neha was on the verge of suicide. She hated herself . She thought she deserved to die. No one in her family knew what to do with her. She had attempted suicide twice. People kill themselves sometimes to end their suffering from a constant low. Everybody was afraid for her, everybody being her family and friends.

ANXIETY.

As mentioned in my previous blogs I am a Manic Depressive. I take medication for the disease which is a mental illness. I used to get severely depressed before I was treated, but now the sickness is more or less under control. My depressions are neither as long or as intense as they used to be and they are mostly circumstantial.
But my husband had been very ill for the last one and a half years and that led to a lot of anxiety. I was afraid for his life and though I tried not to think of it, sometimes the thought would prevail upon my senses. It was a terrifying thought!
My husband did nothing to allay our fears. Instead he made them worse by talking continuously about his own death and the complications of his sickness. My son and I tried our best to encourage and reassure him but to no avail. When you are very sick you think of the worst. You are convinced that you would never get well.
This fear took its toll on me. I am in a state of anxiety now. Most probably. the tension of the last one year has caused an imbalance in the chemicals in my brain. I am so scared! "Of what?" you will ask me. Well, for the slightest reasons. I am afraid to cut vegetables lest I cut my finger! I am afraid to cook lest I burn my hand! I am afraid to get out of the house because I am afraid that I will not be able to find a clean washroom when I desperately need one. 
You will say that these are ridiculous fears. I know that! But I can't get rid of them!
The solution lies with my doctor. He has given me medication assuring me that I will get well. I am taking them and on some days I feel good. But there are still some days when I feel anxious for no reason at all. There is no logic to it. It is a sickness.
My husband thinks that I am acting, and I am only trying to avoid work. Difficult to convince him otherwise. Most mental patients have this disadvantage. People do not believe them. It is a thing that they learn to live with.
Another thing they learn to live with is hope. I am no different. I hope that I will get well soon. Meanwhile I keep praying.

AM I LIBERATED?

Much has been written on this topic, and it is an old topic now. Many women are liberated all around the globe, and many are on their way to being liberated. In India it is the urban population that is liberated. The rural population is still uneducated and very much male dominated.
Personally, I don't think I am a liberated woman. Though I live in a city and there are many career women all around me, I am economically dependent on my husband. I am well educated and I have a degree in Accountancy. I could have easily pursued a career. But I am also a Manic Depressive.
I was correctly diagnosed very late in my life, so my disease came in the way.
Though every commercial organization requires an accountant, and it is easy to get a job, I could only find work in small business enterprises. The bigger companies did not have any vacancy. So it was grueling work with very little pay. Moreover these places have no work culture. There is a lot of backbiting and unhealthy competition. I started suffering from depressions. That made the work twice as hard. Eventually I had to give up working.
But I could not just be a homemaker and take care of my son and husband. I had to do something else. I cleared an exam on creative writing in English. My results were very good and I started writing.
You may wonder how an accountant could turn into a novel writer. As an accountant I was a square peg in a round hole. I did not enjoy my work which made it difficult for me to do it. I had taken up accountancy thinking that it would be lucrative. Unfortunately it was not so.
I had a flair for writing but I had not taken this up, thinking that writing fiction would be risky. But I reverted to it when I found myself with nothing to do but be a good wife and mother.
I started enjoying my work. I have written two novels and a few short stories. But, and this is a big but, I have not yet started earning from my writing and I am still dependent on my husband. It is a big disadvantage as I have to make a lot of adjustments and compromises. I have to dance to my husband's tune. That is very frustrating.
So the question remains. Am I liberated? I am a modern woman with a modern upbringing. But I have no earnings of my own, which makes me feel shackled at times. So, what am I?   

Paripurnata.

Paripurnata means fulfillment. It is the name of the charitable rehab center that I work for. It is a half way home for mentally diseased patients. The patients are treated free of any cost and are even provided with medicines, once their disease is under control. These medicines are also given free of cost and the patient can come and collect them for a lifetime if needed.
It is the brainchild of a doctor named Joyce Shiromani. She built this center to fulfill a dream of doing something for the poverty stricken. The center is run on government grants. It only admits female patients.
The poor, mentally diseased women are one of the most unfortunate members of society. They are born to illiterate parents who are ignorant about mental diseases. Their illogical behavior makes them the brunt of ill treatment and abuse. They are considered to be 'mad', and since the family may not know any better, they are taken to quacks for the treatment of their 'lunacy'. Naturally the witch doctor is not able to cure them. The patient has to endure mental and physical torture as the parents may think that a good beating would straighten everything out!
Rarely are they taken to a qualified doctor who can make a correct diagnosis. Even if he does and sends them to a psychiatrist, the fees are prohibitive. Either the patient languishes in his agony for the rest of her life, or, unable to handle her unreasonable behavior any longer,her family drives her out of her home.
Once she is thrown out, the patient wanders around the streets, lost and broken. The police pick her up, and either sends her to jail or to a mental asylum. The patient might languish in jail for years or be trapped in a mental asylum with abysmal conditions.
Paripurnata rescues such patients and give them a safe haven where they can survive in peace till their disease is under control. The center is clean and healthy and the patients are made to learn various skills which would make them a valuable member of society. In the serene atmosphere of the center the patient is able to relax, rest and recuperate.
Even if they have been thrown out of their homes, they are taken back, once the disease is under control. The management of the center convinces the family that she is well and able to live a normal life. Sometimes it takes a lot of persuasion. But generally their is a happy ending.

DOCTORS.

I have come across doctors of all kinds. Some are good and some are bad. The good doctors can save you. The bad ones can kill you.

I have a Bipolar Disorder. Consequently I have had to visit doctors from my teenage years. They came in all shapes and sizes. Some were male and some female. My first doctors were general physicians. They dismissed my illness as examination fear. I was giving my school final exams when I had my first attack. One of them even said I just had a very bad case of worms!

I was shunted from one doctor to the other. They did their best I guess. But even the psychiatrist misdiagnosed my illness. He said it was an ordinary case of anxiety.

Then came the doctor who thought he could make a lot of money out of me. He couldn't diagnose me correctly either. When I asked him what was wrong with me, he gave me a string of highly technical and incomprehensible words. I could understand nothing. He took a sizable fee from me at every session and tried to prolong the treatment as long as he could. I stopped going to him after sometime.

I was correctly diagnosed after my son was born. I asked the doctor how he could be so sure that I had a Bipolar Disorder. He said his expertise, experience and my case history showed that I was Bipolar. But the good doctor was furious that I had questioned him. He conveyed this to my husband who was extremely annoyed with me because I had dared to open my mouth.    

The next psychiatrist I went to was quite good but he panicked when I went high. There are two sides to my illness. I can become very badly depressed or go into a state of ecstasy. He gave me medication to bring me back to normal. Instead I plunged into depression. It took me a long time to come out of it.

At last I met a doctor who not only diagnosed me correctly but also cured me. By that time I was fifty years old! I have a very good doctor now who not only medicates me but councils me. I am really very fortunate. But this doctor practices in a different city, so I am forced to go to another psychiatrist. She is a very beautiful woman but she gave me medicines that made me exrtremely fat.I am trying to lose all that weight now.  

I am generally very fond of my doctors and I get along well with them. They are mostly good people but prone to human errors. When they go wrong the patient is in trouble. Still by and large, I would say that I am rather grateful to them

AVERAGE LOOKING.

How important is it to be beautiful? When I was a child, my parents told me that it was not very important. It was more important to be good.
As I grew up and in school, from the ninth standard on wards, it suddenly became very important. My school friends made me feel very ordinary. I was not bad looking. I was very fair and that is like winning half the battle in India. But I was short and plump. I had regular features but had to wear a pair of hideous black rimmed spectacles, which robbed me of any beauty that I had.
My school friends would be rapturous over the beauty of one girl in the class who was tall and had blue eyes. Light eyes were considered to be the heights of beauty. And since very few Indian girls have light eyes, she was the only beauty in my class.
How I longed to be beautiful like her! I was good in my studies, but somehow that paled in front of such good looks. I had nothing but my academics to fall back on. I was not rich. I developed an inferiority complex.
The very reason one goes to school, was given little importance. The girls won huge cups for sports. A beauty contest was held and the girl who won the show also came back holding a big trophy. I was given a small silver band pinned onto my blouse. It could hardly be seen.
In college too the beautiful girls had all the fun. All the boys would be chasing them. The few boys who looked at me were not very appealing. So my complex went from bad to worse.
Luckily, I took up a professional course, and I moved around in a sari. People started taking notice of me, which gave me some confidence.
After this, it was time for marriage. Once again my looks took on primary importance. Arranged marriages give a lot of importance to beauty. People assured me that since I was not that good looking I shouldn't be too fussy. I chose a very ordinary man who was not as educated as i was.
I had an unhappy marriage but that's another story.
Beautiful women get married to famous men. I have yet to see someone famous marrying an ordinary looking woman. So beauty is important. And though it is important to be good, average looking is not good enough.   
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MY FAMILY--MY SUPPORT SYSTEM.

I had a small family, comprising of my father, mother, sister and grandparents. Like everyone else, I have had my share of traumas. I am a patient of Manic Depression. Consequently I used to fall into acute depressions. People with mental illness require a very strong support system. I had one in my family.
Initially it was my father and mother who supported me. My sister was younger to me by five years. She was too small.
As I lay awake in the nights, afraid and helpless, my father would hold me till morning. It was not as if he was not tired. He had had a busy day at the office which left him exhausted. Still he never gave up on me. He would comfort and encourage me throughout my sickness. Without him I would have been lost.
 My mother was also a staunch supporter. She did get irritated at times, but mostly she would be the one to take me to the doctor.
"You are one in a lac, I have such faith in you. Why are you behaving like this?" she would inquire bewildered. That  was my first attack of depression, and no one knew what was going on.   They could have treated me with contempt, calling me weak and a coward. But they never did. They stood by my side steadfastly. Consequently I would get out of my illness quickly.
Then my marriage broke up. By this time my sister had grown up. She was married to a Dutch and had a little girl. I had very little income of my own. Though I was working I was getting a miserable salary. My father had retired. My sister and my brother in law came to my rescue. I had left my marriage with my son, so they had to take on the responsibility of both. It was not easy but they did it.
My brother in law adopted my son so that he would never feel the lack of a father. They stuck by me during my depressions as well. To support our family, which had become rather large comprising of my parents, sister, brother in law, niece, my son and me, my brother in law had to leave the country. But he didn't hesitate. Neither did he question why he was responsible for me and my son.
When I went to rehab for a stint of three years, my sister and my brother in law put me in one of the best rooms, for which they paid a lot.
It is because of my support system that I am still alive. Depression makes you suicidal. Without my family I would be dead. Not everybody is as lucky as I am. Mental patients are a nuisance and can be thrown out by their families. Then they are left to languish in mental hospitals. On the contrary I was treated with respect and compassion. I have my family to thank for that.