Hello and welcome to my newsletter! I write about random things and try to connect the dots via personal experiences. Today, I am going to talk about Mental Health and Curtains. In case it is the very first time you have landed here, you can also check out my writings such as

Gardening and Economies of effort, Lights and Rejection, Bags and Batman, Doors and Feminism, Washrooms and Cupboards, Driving and Friendship, or Humor and Instant Messaging!

In case you prefer an Audio version of the same, you can check out this podcast. You can play it while you read this. It has a special guest - Nirali Mehta who is the founder of Mindknit. She has been working in this field for 4 years and is a practising counsellor. You can visit the website or contact her on Instagram.

Here is the podcast-

Mental Health and Curtains Ft Nirali Mehta By Blabber Dabbers Podcast episode

Harsh’s version-

A weird voice comes. Suddenly, the darkroom becomes a room full of bright sunlight and my sleep has said goodbye to me. It is the househelp who has come to clean the house and she needs to open the window.

As I wake up, I ponder upon the long cloth that hangs from the ceiling and reaches to the floor. It is a blind curtain, the one that you pull down and the room becomes darker. I compare that to the one I had in the room while I stayed in Mumbai for my bachelor in Mass Media. It was the curtain that you slide and use. However, both had a flaw. When there would be strong wind or even if the fan is at its peak speed, it would constantly hit the window and make an irritating noise. It was worse for the sliding curtain as it would make sure that the sunlight plays hide and seek with me.

In any case, my sleep had happily departed and I was now in a state of anger. But the anger is so routine like that it goes after a while. I start thinking about solutions to ensure that the irritating noise does not come while I shut the curtain. I thought about many. I could attach magnets on the sides of it to make it heavy but it did not work. I could simply stick it to the ground and put some weight on it but it would still have patches from where it could inflate and let the air force come in! As I thought about it, my mind diverted into a meditation about how curtains are a window to our mental health.

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I could not always keep the curtains closed because it would prevent the light from coming in. I cannot keep myself in the dark. Sometimes, I need to let the light in. I often let the curtains open while I am working so that the light comes in. I feel active. The sun has some power to activate your senses. Maybe Superman is just a symbol of how active you can be if you make the most of sunlight. After all, we are nothing but plants with extra movement powers and no fruit-bearing abilities. Maybe that is why kill them and cut the trees? Too much envy, aye?

Curtains are of various shapes and sizes. I have never seen the same curtain in two houses. Even if everything is the same, the way they are cleaned and maintained is never the same. I guess it is such a private thing. You barely notice it because it is highly possible that the curtain is closed when you visit the house. They serve a simple purpose- stoplight and give privacy.

The curtain that we usually have in our minds is very unique. Some people have such strong curtains that they find it really difficult to lift them. That is when they seek professional help that enables them to lift the heavy curtain. The professionals do not necessarily lift the curtain for the person. They are kind of different here. They make sure that the person who owns the curtain lifts it by themselves. After all, the curtain is a symbol of privacy. No matter how much darkness one has, the ability to seek light cannot be forced upon someone. A wonderful thing about plants is that they modify their behaviour in accordance with the sunlight that they get. Humans are different. Sometimes, they literally run away from the light thinking that it would be dark soon and that would not be very comfortable. I guess that is true. People who live in the Scandinavian countries that have huge amounts of sunless periods do know how it is to survive in that. But still, the tiny ray of hope is what they live for.

Coming back to the curtains of mind, when a professional enables someone to make them lift the curtain that they want to, they open the doors for having a look at their mental health. Yes, there are medical ways to know how the brain is functioning, but I have not heard of machines or techniques to know how someone is feeling. That is when the curtain plays an important role. The curtain is lifted and the people with the observation powers can see what is going on inside. Of course, the whole truth can never be known just by seeing. The resident needs to tell you the whole story. You might find a knife lying on the table but you would never know if that knife is used to cut vegetables, chicken, or humans. The onus lies on the resident to let you know. If you try to get in without permission, you might push them to shut the curtains to you and deprive you of entry.

The beauty of the curtains is also how they are flexible enough to show you only a part that you want to see. It is fully in control and there is no way that the outsider can force you to open or close it when you do not want to. It is like a gateway to a world that you are only allowed to enter if the person trusts you.

Mental health is vast. It does not only focus on the grave instances like depression and some disorders. Day to day stress and lifestyle can also be a part of how it affects mental health. There is no measurement to see how a thing or event can impact a person. It might be a small instance for one but it might impact a person in a massive way and that would change their life. It is not upon us to see how it goes. It is the person that feels and experiences it. There is no standard to see how it would measure it to someone. A simple and harmless fire in the kitchen may scar someone for life to stop them from cooking or it might be a person who watches it but it has no impact on them. The scale is in one’s own mind.

Do you know what is the scariest part of mental health? People can hide the curtains with a mask. A mask so huge that one would never even realize that it is a mask and there is a curtain behind it. It is often noticed that people who seem to be the happiest end up committing suicide. There are several examples of this that you can search online. Fortunately, a ray of hope is that the people that are closest to the masked person can sense the presence of the mask, but they should be close enough and more important, be alert, attentive, and most importantly, listen to them.

One of the worst things we human beings do is to open our curtains in such a hurry that we do not even give the chance for the person we talk to, to open theirs. This is a scenario when two people talk. They are talking perfectly. But they make no sense. Have a look at this imaginary conversation-

X- Welcome back, how was your day?

Y- It was good. How was yours?

X- It was okay. Paid the fees for tuition, met a friend, just a normal day. What would you like to have for dinner?

Y- That is nice. A normal day is boring but doable. I have had so many normal days that it does not matter to me now. I am so bored of them that I do not even realize how it went and it feels that life would be over soon with this boring mundane.

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See how Y is so much interested to share the story that Y does not even recognize that X has asked for what the dinner should be. This is much more common than we think. Shutting someone up, not listening to them when they speak, is an everyday affair.  Y was so engrossed in opening its curtain that it did not realize that X has also opened its curtain and is trying to feel better by seeking a distraction.

The irony of curtains is that while it gives us control, we are so engrossed with the power to control it that sometimes, we do not realize that someone is actually appreciating you for opening or closing the curtain towards them. They try to reciprocate the act but only to be disappointed that you never left obsessing with your own curtain.

I guess that is the evil in us. We hang on to the curtain so much that we forget that others have a curtain too and it is not necessary that everyone is interested in yours or you should be interested in everyone’s. Curtains are about privacy and when the curtain is down, it should be respected as it is without forcing them to lift it. The invasion might make them have a stronger curtain for you.

So what is it that curtains necessarily do? Yes, of course, the above things that I said. But even more, they protect you. Instead of writing more on it, have a look at it and see how “ Parda” can have multiple meanings-

Gradually, you do need to shed the curtain with someone. That is when you would be yourself, That is when you actually live and be free!

I guess enough blabbering for this time. The house help has completed the work. And that means I can finally shut the curtain and go back to sleep!

Until next time,

Good night! :P

Song for you-

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Raj’s Version-

Mental health feels like such a recent concept in itself. Not to say that it didn’t exist previously but the sheer lack of thinking abilities and language for the whole topic of mental health was left behind the curtain as all the dust and sunlight gathered on it near the fine french windows. Never to be seen, from the outside one could only see the beautifully intricate design of the curtain, never wondering what it is exactly that the curtain is hiding, or revealing. 

From such times to today when mental health has almost become a fad, we have come a long way. And the evolution has also been one of the curtains, from those old heavy designs with tonnes of embroideries on them to the simple paper-thin translucent remote-controlled or smartphone-controlled curtains that seem all nice, shiny, and swanky yet they still do the same bit; of hiding and revealing. Sometimes I wonder, a lot of technology that we make, do we even need it or is it just the product of an idle mind in a rich world? ‘Eternals’ explores this idea, the play of invention and technology with the human condition. 

There are millions of laments online about the need to talk about mental health and its under penetration even today when it comes to treatment and care, and I fully agree with all of it, this is not to deny anything. However, I wonder if there is something else that we can look at? Something that we are still not talking about or isn’t a fad yet but needs our attention? It can very well be something related to mental health or curtains or something completely different. Let's see if something comes up during my conversation in the podcast with two very smart and intelligent people: Harsh and Nirali. 

Mental Health and Curtains Ft Nirali Mehta By Blabber Dabbers Podcast episode

Chughtai wrote a short story long back and titled it ‘lihaaf’, and no better metaphor comes to my mind than this lihaaf that Chughtai uses to talk about the sexual relationship between two women. The imagery of an elephant under the lihaaf only slightly visible with thin light in a small room on a dark night as observed by a young girl is quite powerful. Imagine that elephant dancing but never able to come out of that lihaaf, similar to the curtain that we talk about here, now that would be some load to behold wouldn’t that be?

Charlotte Perkins Gilman should also be mentioned here along with her short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ where she talks about her mental health in the men's world numerous years before we as a society started even considering it. Coincidentally even there was a wallpaper – the design of which drives her crazy, isn’t that again similar to the curtain? Harsh sure did a wonderful job of putting this topic together. 

Quite interesting to see these metaphors, their nature, and their implications coming out to be so similar despite the massive variation in the time these works were written in, the society they were written in, the lives these writers lived, and the experiences they had. One common thread is that we see women writing about women’s own experiences in both these cases. Shouldn’t that also be promoted in mental health? Just this morning I was looking up some books on disability as it was the national disability day and in the reviews on Goodreads, one of the comments for one of the books read that ‘can the parents of disabled kids please stop writing books about disability as if you experience it’. And this comment moved me, made me think for a while because we end up doing this often. In all the noise about experts, scholars, parents, relatives, neighbours, yada yada yada we forget to listen to the concerned group itself. What about the people with their own experiences of mental health rather than pontificating on the topic in a meta sense or in a theoretical manner, can’t it be simplified to create some space for the first person? ‘Me too’ movement did something like this and that led to its radical success, at least on social media. Can we have something similar to ‘me too’ for mental health? And even if we did, how much of a service or disservice would that be to us in general and to the particular individuals? I would surely like Nirali’s insights on this one.

Ayee! Thank you so much for reading and I would be so happy to know what you think about this letter. Do feel free to give me any constructive feedback. I would really appreciate it! I write these things fortnightly so see you on or before 1st October! :D

That is all from our side for this edition! See you all! Like, share, comment, subscribe, send kabootars, throw your devices and computers, and make us famous! :P