Shhhh...that person is MAD...yes? no!!

Shreya was on the verge of committing suicide this morning. Her close friend had seen her go towards the hostel terrace & had followed her when she did not reply to her calls; only to find her sitting on the railing & staring at the miniature vehicles below. After forcing to get down to the safer side & pulling to go back to attend the class, did Shreya confide to her about the thought of suicide.

She held me close as she wept. Shreya was her only daughter; a brilliant student, a gifted flute player & really beautiful. But soon after her graduation, she started being someone she wasn’t. Her situation could not be described, for there were days which were never absolutely normal. Either she was too cheerful to stop laughing all day or she was gloomy enough to pull her hair one by one from the scalp. She stopped being her usual self & her mood could transform to hysteria in a matter of few minutes.

On consultation & second opinions from the best psychiatrists in the city, Shreya was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder.

Seeing her mother cry, I strangely felt nothing but a whole lot of emotions surging through me. After a decade, I still vividly remember delivering my child & hating it from the moment I saw it. I still feel that it looked like a monster with patchy, really dark skin, on those initial days. I preferred not seeing it in the first week but I had to feed it.

As days passed I started liking the monster, after all how long do you hate someone who’s a part of you. The patchy skin gave way to soft fair skin & he turned from being a monster to being my angel. Everyone kept saying that he looked so from day one & they frowned at me when I told them about his previous state of ugliness. My husband consulted the gynaec, who told that I suffered from postpartum depression. She promised that it was common & that it would soon go away.

I remember sitting on the rocking chair contemplating suicide. I had no reasons for doing so, but I wanted my life to end. I knew it was because of my situation but how do you control the thoughts, shut them down? The thought of my baby, my family held me back. They are the only reason I am alive today.

I remember overhearing Shreya’s mother tell her friend over a tele-converstaion, that I was a mad-woman & that I needed to meet some tantrik. She even thought that I was possessed by the devil himself. It took me a year to be normal again. It was the support & patience of my husband that brought me back.

Now I watch her weeping. Should I take her daughter to a tantrik? 

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Have you ever realized that information is actually the cure to many blind beliefs? We tend to believe nonsense when we do not know the truth. It seems only rational when you are equipped with knowledge.
Yes, the power of knowledge. 
And no, not every person who is not in the right frame of mind is MAD.