Unwillingness to adapt to changing situations is what leads us into mental depression

 

India has been jolted by the suicide of a young, talented and hard working actor in Bollywood, the country’s biggest movie industry. As rumor mills swirl around nepotism as the apparent reason and repeated rejections from movies in spite of delivering hits and becoming a bankable star, the focus is firmly fixed on depression, the reason that finally led to his untimely demise.

Is depression a disease or a weakness of the mind is the debate that is hot on everyone’s plate now. I believe it’s neither. We need to see this from two perspectives.

1) Human mind is like God or the Almighty. The more we try to understand both the further they keep going away from us.
2) Our lives are fully controlled by situations created mostly by others.

Is depression a disease?

Is common cold a disease? We still do not know. But because we have been taught and indoctrinated into believing that cold is a disease, we take medication for it. And what do those medicines do? Suppress the symptoms of cold. What we need to know here is that suppression does not eliminate the disease. We think the cold is gone but only for now. Whatever is causing the cold remains inside the body. Moreover all medicines that suppress symptoms of diseases have side effects. Antidepressants never cures depression. They just numbs the brain so that we do not feel the pain of what is hurting our minds. If anyone believes antidepressants will help us stay alive, no. We will eventually get tired of living on them. We are not used to taking medicines to live our daily lives normally.

Is depression a weakness of the mind?

Sushant was academically brilliant, from being the national level Physics Olympiad champion to becoming a mechanical engineer by cracking an entrance exam with a top 10 rank, his mind was probably bordering on being a genius. We will never know what he would have become if he hadn’t chosen to become an actor. People of such academic pedigree are hardly seen in the movie industry but what we can understand now is that he was extremely passionate about whatever he pursued. That he was extremely hard working and motivated to become an established actor was evident from his movies. Such a person can never have a weak mind.

Then why did he take the extreme step?

Well, he did make some mistakes.

1) Looks like he never asked himself if it was his fault. As someone who has contemplated harming myself more than once, I managed to pull my mind back each time with the simple question “is it my fault?” Our lives are a 3-dimensional affair. While on one one side we have the free will to make our choices, on the other two sides are situations and destiny. We suffer mostly by becoming part of situations created by others knowingly or inadvertently. Destiny essentially says life is full of ups and downs. So all we can do is to be hard working, sincere, dedicated and focused. What happens from that point is not in our hands. That’s where we need three more qualities: 1) Patience 2) Perseverance and 3) Resilience. We will not develop these three qualities unless we ask ourselves if it’s our fault. He had already become a well known face in Bollywood. All he had to do was to be calm and wait. Everyone has their own life clocks that run differently and that is the beauty of life.

2) He made his passion his profession. Asking to make one’s passion his/her profession is a completely wrong advice to give. A profession is to make a living and work can be done only at the whims and fancies of others. Especially in the creative world, art in any form has to flow from the depths of our mind. Art and wealth never go hand in hand. If he had an alternate profession to make a living and he was acting only to fulfill his passion, no uncertainties in the movie industry would have had affected him. He would not have had to ask for work in the movie industry and be at the mercy of movie producers and directors. Supply only when demand comes to us.

3) He listened to others. We all have an inner voice and we also have instincts and gut feeling. Always go with them. That’s our natural reaction to facing a situation and our first thought about the situation usually turns out to be the correct one. Surrendering the control of our mind to counselors & antidepressants is the completely wrong way to combat depression. Gaining control over our mind, senses & needs & distracting & diverting our mind away from what is hurting us is what will truly help in overcoming depression.

The pressure to find work & perform well exists across all professions which is why work should neither become an obsession nor stressful for long periods of time. The only way out is to involve the mind in many activities & develop varied interests. Fulfillment of any form comes only when we develop mindfulness. Only when we are content with who we have become can we look ahead and see who we can become.

My understanding of depression is very simple. We are perpetual victims of situations and our lives are like sinusoidal waves. When life starts going the wrong way for us, we try to control the situations. When we are not able to we try harder. When we get stuck in the loop and we fail repeatedly, our mind starts slipping. When the world starts looking down on us, we start losing our self esteem and we start believing we are not worthy of what we are aspiring for. Knowing the Kübler-Ross model is very helpful here. The first step to facing a difficult situation is to move from denial to acceptance quickly. Only when we accept a situation do we start getting greater clarity on how to face it. We will come across many situations where the only solution is to accept it and wait for it to pass. We do not usually walk when it’s raining heavily, we wait for it to stop. Snippets of survival.

There is no depression in nature. Animals have a simple 3 pronged agenda – 1) Survive 2) Eat & 3) Reproduce and they are absolutely clear about this. Having complex emotions doesn’t mean we cannot simplify them. Having greater needs doesn’t mean we cannot reduce them according to circumstances. Simply put, we need to be adaptable. To surmise, reluctance to adapt to changing situations is what leads the mind into depression.

Sushant, I hope you will learn these lessons in your afterlife and you will get another chance to redeem yourself. Be at peace for now.

How patriarchy has played a far greater role than Islamophobia in the rise of Hindu nationalism

The rise of Hindu nationalism, better known as Hindutva in India is no accident. Though resentment towards Muslims is being perceived as the fundamental reason for it’s current status, patriarchy has played the underlying role with far greater significance.

Indian society’s evolution after it’s independence from British rule can be traced mostly through the evolution of it’s film industry, mainly Bollywood. Through the 1940’s and 50’s, a virtuous male and female protagonist was always the flavour of the movies which would be complemented by the songs and their lyrics. Of course there would be other characters who would either be virtuous or villainous and the distinction would be very clear from the beginning of the movies. Into the 60’s and experiments with male protagonists having grey shades began. Enter the 70’s and film makers started portraying both male and female protagonists with grey shades. It was the time of hip hop and gypsy culture and both reflected on the stories of the movies. But the virtuous female continued to exist, the most enduring one being the roles essayed by the actress Vidya Sinha. Then through the 80’s and 90’s we see women protagonists becoming more assertive in their personality and character which then started reflecting on their appearance and attire. Now we see bold women protagonists openly expressing their sexuality and even murdering their husbands for his millions.

My dad was raised up in Kolkata where grandpa worked for about 40 years. He used to have the projector and screen to show movies and he used to get movies on reels for rent. I was born in the 70’s and grew up listening to grandma talking incessantly about the movies from the 50’s and 60’s especially when songs from those movies used to appear on TV. Now I realize that the movies she talked about the most were from the 50’s and early 60’s and her interest in movies had started decreasing from the later half of the 60’s. She had hardly watched movies from the 70’s and used to selectively watch Hindi movies on TV. What is eye opening is that this coincides with the waning of virtuosity in the male and female protagonists. She used to openly display her dislike for characters with negative shades in every movie she used to watch.

One important reason for the rise of Hindu nationalism is for the restoration of this patriarchy on Hindu society. After the liberalization of Indian economy in 1991, the country has literally been invaded by western culture and lifestyle. I had never heard about Valentine’s day throughout my academic years from school to college but it has become like a festival in India now. Girls and women openly expressing their love and sexuality in a society where the virtuous female protagonist from the movies of the 50’s and 60’s committing suicide after being raped by the villain was considered appropriate to redeem herself was always bound to ignite patriarchal angst. When the liberal part of Indian society cry hoarse every year on Valentine’s day when young dating couples are caught and chased away by Hindu nationalists, they do not see how deep rooted patriarchy is in Indian society. Many of them might even be adoring male protagonists in movies bashing up and butchering villains who dared to violate the modesty of the female protagonists. This is reflected on how people literally worship the actors who play the virtuous heroes and have even built temples with their idols. Patriarchal mindset has what made Hindutva leaders denounce western attire for women and make horrific comments like women who expose their skin in public deserves to get raped.

These are the reasons why Hindu nationalists are using the premise of Ram to assert their dominance. The king from the epic Ramayan whom Hindus worship as God is considered as the epitome of virtuosity. The ever obedient son who abdicated the throne and accepted to live in the forest for 14 years to fulfill the wish of his step mother, the hero who crossed the ocean to kill a demonic king and rescue his wife from his clutches and the husband who demanded that his wife walk through fire to prove her “purity” for him. Ramayan was written and rewritten time and again to maintain the stranglehold of patriarchy on Hindu society. If hatred for Muslims was the primary or sole reason, Krishna was a better candidate than Ram because based on the sheer number of demons Krishna had apparently slayed, demonizing Islam and invoking Krishna would have had been their go-to strategy. But according to the four ages or Yugas Hindus follow, Krishna lived in a time that was far less virtuous than Ram so obviously patriarchal rules weren’t so stringent during Krishna’s time.

Contrast this with the story of Iliad in Greek culture. A similar story line as that of Ramayan but with telltale differences. The female protagonist chooses to leave an abusive husband and king and go with the prince from another kingdom whom she falls in love with. The king uses his wife’s infidelity as the excuse to wage war with that kingdom and destroy it. All characters in the story have virtuosity but also have shades from grey to dark. Iliad was written and fits perfectly with the contemporary times but an openly abusive male protagonist and an overly assertive female protagonist are like the Antichrist in the world patriarchy.

Simply put, Indian society is in the throes of the conflict between the ideologies of Ramayan and Iliad now. Though the world is seeing the venom of Islamophobia being spread across India, the hatred for Muslims is being used to create the illusion of a common enemy to unite all Hindus under one umbrella so that archaic patriarchal rules can be reinforced on Hindu society. It is not without reason that Ramayan was adapted as a television series back in the 90’s and the government has started rerunning the series recently on TV. Add to this, a prominent cabinet minister took a picture of him watching Ramayan at home and advertised it on social media with the caption “I am watching Ramayan. Are you?” The message is clearly for the older generations of Hindus to admonish the younger generation for their wayward western lifestyle and bring them on the track of patriarchy.

Where it gets dicey is in how patriarchy is being sold to the Hindu community. With patriarchy Islamophobia is attached along with the aura of leadership and invincibility created around Modi, the PM and leader of the Hindu nationalist party the BJP. There are also some of the upper caste communities trying to restore their hegemony on Hindu society and to achieve this objective everyone at the helm of organizations that propagate Hindutva ideology are upper caste Hindus. Patriarchy and upper caste hegemony are two sides of the same coin. This is a complete package deal. The ones who choose Modi have to accept patriarchy and endorse Islamophobia. Many Hindus might be supporting Hindutva for one aspect but they are left with no choice but support everything else. On the flip side, a Hindu who does not support patriarchy or Islamophobia or both gets flagged as a Modi hater irrespective of any or no political affiliations.

In this situation it is quite easy to win elections because narratives can be created on one or multiple aspects at a time that can also be interconnected. The animosity with Pakistan was well exploited to create Islamophobia during the 2019 general elections and they easily pocketed the votes of Hindus who support India’s stand against Pakistan politically and militarily and the votes of Hindus who hate Muslims in general. In the recent Delhi assembly elections, the AAP party had successfully negated the BJP’s attempt to invoke the name of Ram to get votes by countering with their own call to Hanuman, the monkey king and Ram’s sidekick in the Ramayan but BJP still managed to garner votes and win 8 seats by unleashing Islamophobia. There are no fences and fence sitters in Indian general elections now. The choice is between being a Modi supporter or a Modi hater.

How India exits the COVID-19 induced lock down is on focus now but looks like the lock down imposed by the patriarchal Hindutva juggernaut will maintain it’s stranglehold for some more time. It remains to be seen how these short term and long term lock downs are going to shape Indian society and her future.

The MeToo hashtags can become the pivots of women empowerment & societal change

In certain jokes floating through the social media I have seen the phrase “That escalated quickly”. Given the situations it gets used, I find it hilarious. The same happened with the MeToo and MeTooIndia hashtags on Twitter but in extremely serious way. They started trending slowly but then hit the high notes so loud that mere hashtags are on the brink of creating a social movement.

It all started with the details of one powerful man floating around. But no one was ready to take out his name. Then someone did. Women journalists pounced on it and his name became a raging wildfire. M J Akbar, a lion in journalism and now a cabinet minister in the central government. Turns out he was a predatory lion, using his mammoth stature in the journalism industry to sexually abuse young women journalists and use his cape of fear of power and influence to devour their self respect and dignity. Then came Alok Nath’s name out. The epitome of culture, decency and manhood. Turns out he is a good old rapist. The burning embers had caught fire. Names of corporate honchos and familiar names from the movie industries followed. Social media has lit up. Journalists and common people alike are baying for the blood of sexual predators.

I got into a row with popular South Indian singer Chinmayi on Twitter. She had called out the name of Vairamuthu, a song writer of almost legendary status who has collaborated on many of the Tamil songs of A R Rehman. Many aspiring singers and artists who had been abused by him were reaching out to her and taking her help in disclosing their experiences anonymously. My problem was two fold. How did the situation deteriorate to the level where so many women in the case of M J Akbar are reporting their abuse sagas and some of them happened 2 decades back? They kept quiet. So I wrote to Chinmayi requesting her to reveal the names of the victims as keeping quiet for so long and hiding behind anonymity are the reasons why sexual abuse has become a daily affair and common practice in the corporate world. She replied saying they have their career to worry about which is why they cannot call out their abusers. Exactly. Abusers are feeding on this fear to continue abusing. If Chinmayi had spoken out about her experiences long back, many younger singers may have escaped being preyed on by Vairamuthu. This is just one aspect of the situation. Victims are compromising on their self respect and dignity by choosing to suffer the indignity in silence. What is more, all men have become potential predators in the eyes of women. It is scary how women see men trying to engage with them in lighthearted conversations as flirting.

Women are also complicit in helping create such a toxic work environment. They have waded into a male bastion demanding equality in work and social status. This is not a Utopian world where men would step aside and let women take over the reins of power from them. What would men seek from women in return other than sexual favours? The ones who agreed laid the foundation stones of the system. From then on, everyone who went on to enter the system were conditioned to live in the system. From bedrooms sex became an accepted practice inside boardrooms. Women who couldn’t digest and come around to accepting all of this were scarred mentally with abuse. The heritage of the system has been handed down to the next generations of men who have only grown on to become more brazen in their actions.

What is astounding now is, other than a few murmurs in the movie industry and corporate offices, there is almost a deathly silence. It is improbable that the world of glitz, glamour, fashion and wealth could be a perfect world. Rather, it almost seems like everyone has taken shelter for the storm to pass. Shobhaa De the acclaimed writer and journalist was on TV to talk about sexual abuse in Bollywood and she said the ones who have been caught in the net are the expendables and small flies. The big and the mighty ones are hiding in plain sight. She was right on the money. Women have had to go through hell and back especially in the movie, aviation (airline) and healthcare (nursing) industries to even hold on to their jobs. But not a single mouth is opening to complain. Goes to show the heights of male dominance which in turn shows how low women have allowed themselves to be buried in the mire of sex, abuse and oppression.

Every individual’s responsibility in the society is to make it better for the next generations. It is not enough that we only try to make our children’s lives better. A life with self respect and dignity should get priority over everything else in society. All urban men who become influencers in the society are raised up in similar environments. Then how do some go on to become such wily predators? It is upon every individual to introspect and ask do we want to continue living inside such a slimy system where we have to keep worrying about our women’s safety and well being all the time. MeToo and MeTooIndia is a desperate call for change. They are the atomic bombs of the urban society. Their explosions have been triggered. What the abusers and predators fear is the mushroom cloud that emanates from it and envelops one and all. This may be the only chance for women to go up in arms against their tormentors. This has to become a movement, cleanse the urban world and it’s fire should then spread into rural heartlands. Women have always called out for equality and empowerment. Their time to take centerstage seems to have finally arrived.

Death of an actor and media’s insatiable celebrity frenzy

Two days back I started the day with the big breaking news that celebrity Bollywood actor Sridevi had passed away the previous night. Initially I thought it was a hoax news as such news of the deaths of famous Hollywood actors keep coming up on social media but then TV news channels started confirming the news. It was first reported that she died of cardiac arrest but yesterday, the entire narration took an abrupt turn. Autopsy reports confirmed that she had died of “accidental drowning”. For the past two days, news channels have been salivating over her death and have become her propaganda machines. Nirav Modi has been buried and forgotten and they do not even seem to care what else is happening in India and the world.

Sridevi was a commercially successful actor whose acting for me was over the top at her best. She started acting at an early age in South Indian movies and moved to Bollywood as her stature grew. She was popular at the time when serious actors like Shabana Azmi and Smitha Patil were doing wonders in the parallel world of art cinema and Sridevi was no match to their acting abilities. She had 3 distinct looks across her career. The purely South Indian look she had when she started off was significantly altered to fit into the glamorous Bollywood roles she used to revel in. In her most recent avatar, her face looks drawn and haggard, a la Michael Jackson in his last times.

Movies can be categorized broadly into entertainers, ones that highlight social issues and ones that create social impact. Then there was another divide, the urban and the rural class. Movies were made either for the urban or the rural class. Each movie style had it’s own staple menu as well. Into all of this came the movie Dil Chahta hai in 2001 in which all the 3 categories were so skillfully interwoven by Farhan Akhtar that even though Dil Chahta Hai was a completely city based movie, it found success among the rural class as well. The after effects of the movie has not only persisted in Bollywood but has permeated across all regional movie industries and transformed movie making as a whole in India.

Movies make revenue in millions and billions of dollars these days. People spend so much money watching movies and what do they get in return? Secret Superstar, a recently released movie was made at a budget of Rs. 15 crores and reportedly earned Rs. 900 crores at the box offices across the world. No movie has ever been made with a ROI of 6000%. It tells the story of a 15 year old girl born into an extremely orthodox Muslim family who aspires to be a singer interwoven exquisitely with domestic abuse. Now what is the marker of it’s unprecedented success? In China, cases reported of domestic abuse dramatically increased after the movie was released. This is how movies should connect with people and this is the essence of movie making.

Sridevi was never really part of meaningful or socially relevant movies. Neither her movies nor her style of acting would have been successful at any other times. Himmatwala, one of her successful movies from 1983 was remade in 2013 with different actors and it was a commercial disaster. She even reportedly asked for a monstrous amount to be part of the Bahubali franchise. Her face has looked gaunt and haggard in the last few years, probably because of all the chemicals she had to use to look glamorous for so many years and maybe because of her luxurious lifestyle which became even more clear when it was revealed that alcohol traces were found in her blood.

There is a reason why mainstream media is glorifying her in spite of all of this. For a day, they bombarded the people’s psyche with information about cardiac arrest and hospitals because rumors abounded that she had died of a heart failure. A day later their narration quickly switched because autopsy reports revealed that she had died of drowning. I don’t understand why they cannot wait for the facts to come out before they report incidents. People love speculations and gossips and news channels thrive on these to improve their TRPs. People are mesmerized by all the glitz and glamour of the celebrities and media uses this to report about them to the people which satisfies everyone. The celebrities get to remain in the limelight and attract people to them so that people spend more money to watch their movies. People get to be entertained with celebrity lives and gossips. Media gets everything else. No wonder people have become media’s best commodity and their money making machine.