By Harsha Singh:
Of late, there has been much talk about a television actress hanging herself to death. Several people are after the individual who drove her to it. Some people are after what was the need to do it in the first place. Well, you see, before you cut the cord, there is a gestation period of hanging on to the cord. Both are difficult.
I can understand it because I have experienced a terribly long probation. One can hope to graduate but society and moreover your peers never let you. What makes us enrol in this kind of a place? HELLO! Fact check, you don’t. You just sink into it. It’s a black hole which you came across unknowingly and knowingly. Sometimes the cause is not important. It is important for the doctor and the counsellor but not for you. Come on; you can live with the fact that it just happened. Why be intolerant of it? Yes, humour is most often used to hide it. Now you will say that people, who seem perfectly happy, cannot be depressed. False. Fact check number 2. Refer to Robin Williams.
As I said, desperate times require desperate measures. People die or they make their bodies die because they are already dead from inside. What’s the use of living any more if you cannot live it? It’s like throwing away stale food. You might find these words disturbing but that’s the state of a depressed mind.
In a parallel dimension, you are going on with your life. You get depressed. You tell your parents. They totally understand. You tell your friends. They are equally supportive. You visit a counsellor. You talk to them. You try and get better. After some time, you meet new people. Let’s say you have a new job. You also have to move to a new city. You tell these new people and they don’t judge you at all. They don’t pass remarks behind your back. They do not gossip. They understand. You win your morale back in such a loving atmosphere. You fight. You survive.
In real life, you are going on with your life and suddenly, depression hits. You hit an all-time low as you can’t tell your parents. You tell your friends but they think it’s just one of your mood swings. Finally, when you do tell your parents after mustering up courage, they go into denial mode, claiming how can their gene be defective? In all this drama there are some days when you feel okay and some days when you feel rotten. People will say that it is just a mood swing and almost convince you of it. You get on with your life and you get a new job. You go to a new city. You meet new people and you are exposed to unfamiliar conditions. You don’t find people to fall back on and you again sink into depression. It’s multi-dimensionally convoluted. It’s not like every other disease even though it’s like every other disease. People will be pleased that you stay normal some days and in the process you will come to hate the world.
If it’s a writer, you can actually view the degree of madness. The label ‘mad genius’ was not created to glamorise an artist’s unconventionality. Creative expression and mental illness go hand in hand. The reason is that they find an unhindered outlet in the absence of others. So one day the writing would be cheerful. Then some days it will become passive aggressive and on other days it will be minus the aggression just passive to those days where it will be nothing at all. Blank sheets.
If you are crazy, you will hope that you can probably write a masterpiece like Woolf or Plath before losing the cord but while you still hang loosely to it, let’s make people understand why in the first place are we hanging on to it and not swinging like Tarzan from it. Come on fellas! Try at least!