Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, wrote Henry David Thoreau, and if WHO is to be believed, then a majority of those people may be in India.
Reports cite a recent WHO-sponsored study based on interviews of 89,000 people in 18 countries that pegs Indians as among the world's most depressed people. It also observes that women are twice as likely as men to suffer from it. Of course, the Indian health ministry has issued denials as to the reports, but one only has to look at recent headlines in Mumbai alone to wonder if we are as emotionally stable as we believe ourselves to be.
Psychologists and psychiatrists refer to 'lifestyle diseases' when they make observations relating to big city blues — loneliness, alienation and isolation. To come to terms with the occurrence of these is another matter. How can one really explain the recent case of a starving mentally unstable woman found with her mother and siblings' dead bodies in her flat, in the middle of a bustling Thane society, not one residing there knowing that the family had been starving for years? Or understand the desperate sadness of the situation when reports outlined how the woman stayed with those bodies till she couldn't bear the hunger anymore, then wandered down at which point the neighbours got alerted. Some reports put it even more chillingly — that she had waited till evening to disclose the deaths because she didn't want to trouble anyone. Worse, this is not an isolated case.
There have been other such cases in the recent couple of years. Some more sensational than others, which once again stress the loneliness and isolation of Maximum city — a family of a wife and three daughters locked up by an unemployed man for seven years, living in fear of his rage, without anybody knowing. A celebrated model found hanging after heartbreak, not one friend a phone call away. Even more unnerving, two mothers jumping to their deaths from high rises, a few months apart in suicide, throwing their children down before them, leaving behind a shocked, stunned city unable to make sense of the headlines the following days.
Coexisting with this apparent alienation, utter extremes of aggression — this is a city in which a 12-year-old boy is tied up, made to witness attackers slit his mother's throat till she bleeds to death. This is a city where reports tell of a father selling his 9-year-old daughter for Rs20 (Rs20 can hardly get you a loaf of decent bread these days) to a druggie who then rapes and strangles her. This is a city in which a husband, suspecting his wife of infidelity, beheads her, apparently then carrying the head to neighbours. Do I need to go on?
A significant part of big city life is about minding your own business because you really don't have the time to mind anyone else's. But the flip side can be punishing — aloneness, even in a crowd. And when the silence gets deafening, isolation such that seeking help is not an option.
Survey findings accurate or not, one of Maximum city's biggest perceived strengths, the wonder of anonymity, is in danger of becoming its weakest link. That is, unless we pay heed to what is happening around us. Wake up call, Mumbai.
Reports cite a recent WHO-sponsored study based on interviews of 89,000 people in 18 countries that pegs Indians as among the world's most depressed people. It also observes that women are twice as likely as men to suffer from it. Of course, the Indian health ministry has issued denials as to the reports, but one only has to look at recent headlines in Mumbai alone to wonder if we are as emotionally stable as we believe ourselves to be.
Psychologists and psychiatrists refer to 'lifestyle diseases' when they make observations relating to big city blues — loneliness, alienation and isolation. To come to terms with the occurrence of these is another matter. How can one really explain the recent case of a starving mentally unstable woman found with her mother and siblings' dead bodies in her flat, in the middle of a bustling Thane society, not one residing there knowing that the family had been starving for years? Or understand the desperate sadness of the situation when reports outlined how the woman stayed with those bodies till she couldn't bear the hunger anymore, then wandered down at which point the neighbours got alerted. Some reports put it even more chillingly — that she had waited till evening to disclose the deaths because she didn't want to trouble anyone. Worse, this is not an isolated case.
There have been other such cases in the recent couple of years. Some more sensational than others, which once again stress the loneliness and isolation of Maximum city — a family of a wife and three daughters locked up by an unemployed man for seven years, living in fear of his rage, without anybody knowing. A celebrated model found hanging after heartbreak, not one friend a phone call away. Even more unnerving, two mothers jumping to their deaths from high rises, a few months apart in suicide, throwing their children down before them, leaving behind a shocked, stunned city unable to make sense of the headlines the following days.
Coexisting with this apparent alienation, utter extremes of aggression — this is a city in which a 12-year-old boy is tied up, made to witness attackers slit his mother's throat till she bleeds to death. This is a city where reports tell of a father selling his 9-year-old daughter for Rs20 (Rs20 can hardly get you a loaf of decent bread these days) to a druggie who then rapes and strangles her. This is a city in which a husband, suspecting his wife of infidelity, beheads her, apparently then carrying the head to neighbours. Do I need to go on?
A significant part of big city life is about minding your own business because you really don't have the time to mind anyone else's. But the flip side can be punishing — aloneness, even in a crowd. And when the silence gets deafening, isolation such that seeking help is not an option.
Survey findings accurate or not, one of Maximum city's biggest perceived strengths, the wonder of anonymity, is in danger of becoming its weakest link. That is, unless we pay heed to what is happening around us. Wake up call, Mumbai.
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