It Happens

The life we live,
Is a queer mixture,
Of bits & pieces ,
Thrown together.

The dear are often,
Torn away,
While peripherals,
Will hold sway.

Helplessly caught,
In  throes of fate,
We seldom manage,
To hold the spate.

From far away,
A tide will come,
To wipe out all,
And leave the scum.

In this very scum,
You may find a shell,
The pearl inside,
Has a story to tell.

Harbored in there,
Isolated from all,
One tiny drop,
Knew how to evolve.

Oust the trash,
Clean the slate,
Stir yourself,
A new dawn breaks!

Dilemma

I first met Shruti about three decades ago when both of us were in our early thirties.My husband Ram had taken up a job in Bikaner where both Shruti & her husband Satish were his colleagues.I was a bit flustered at having had to leave my beloved Delhi.Everything was different in Bikaner & i felt totally at sea.So when i came to know that Shruti too had been born & brought up in Delhi,i latched up to her like a drowning man would to a life-boat.She too welcomed me warmly.Our kids,being of the same age group,bonded at their own level.

However there was a difference between Shruti & me--she was a career woman while i was a full time housewife.Yet if you saw us you would invariably pinpoint me as the careerist & vice-versa.I was chic,smart & more modern in my outlook;she was short,roly-poly & quite matronly to look at.But while my smartness was only skin-deep,she was worldly wise in her dealings--a quick repartee always rolled off her tongue.On the other hand i was very mild by nature.

Nevertheless we got along like a house on fire.Our husbands too enjoyed each other's company.While Satish was an extrovert & would talk a lot,Ram would mostly let him have his say uninterrupted.
Thus our families made a nice compatible group & we all became good friends.But i noticed that Satish snapped at Shruti quite often,& that too without reason.She,who was always so smart & witty with others; would cower down with a meek "OK " or "As you say "
.
She was his equal in every other way but her subservience at the personal level irked me to no end.By & by i made other friends & they told me that Satish was given to violence & Shruti quietly put up with it.Why she tolerated such shoddy treatment when she was earning as much as him & could easily have walked out,was beyond my comprehension.As if this was not enough,it also became known that he had a girl friend on the sly,on whom he lavished costly gifts.And to think that Shruti was a person who thought thrice before spending a penny!This sort of extravagance must have been even more torturous for her than the personal indignities she had to put up with.I felt deeply for my friend,but she never indicated,by any gesture,that there was anything amiss in her life.Years rolled by.

Then one day Satish came down with a stroke.He was very sick & became paralytic.Shruti tended to him diligently but he failed to improve.He was laid up on bed for three years & was totally dependent on the wife whom he had never appreciated.We were sorry to see a spirited man going down the hill like that.I wondered what went on in his mind.Did he feel remorse for his past behavior?When i looked at Shruti handling her job,the family's finances,Satish's treatment ,the kids' education & so many other responsibilities of running a household ; i could not but marvel at her magnanimity & fortitude.Did she ever think of neglecting Satish to take her vendetta ? I wonder !!!

A Life Ragged to Rags.

Misfortune sometimes approaches insidiously.It appears in the garb of a boon,& then goes on to entrap you in it's clutches.This is what happened to Arun (name changed),elder son of a middle class family of four siblings;a studious boy,a good student & a loner by nature.He passed high school & aspired to do B.Tech.In order to pass the entrance test his father took a loan of 2 lakhs & enrolled him in coaching classes.Being a bright student,he was admitted to a college.But it was quite far off from his home.As soon as he joined there, his woes began.

He was ragged mercilessly by his college seniors.He was made to strip & sexual abuse too was attempted.He could not take this & egged on by a few friends who were from his own home town;he complained to the authorities.It seems he was victimized for having done so.Slowly his friends too deserted him.He was isolated on the campus-far away from his home.He became paranoid.He could not sleep for full five days.He would spend the time in college common room watching the T.V,but nothing seeped into his mind.He thought that he was seeing himself on the T.V.His father was asked to come & take him away.This was followed by psychiatric treatment & he went back after improvement.But things were never the same for him.A once bright student,wanting nothing but to qualify & land a good job,was reduced to a wreck.So much so that he failed to get his degree within the stipulated ten years.

He returned home but the end of his troubles was nowhere in sight.Anti-psychotic medicines made him lazy & supine.The disease  played havoc with his emotions & behavior so that he was liable to have fits of anger & violence.The atmosphere in his home had already deteriorated to a dismal extent.His younger brother was a sociopath & Arun became his sole target.He would pick up a knife,a sword or iron rods to beat him up.His grouse ?That the loan taken on his account had plunged the family into a financial crisis while he himself was sitting idle.His parents too,bowed down by multifarious problems,had become callous & indifferent.Can you imagine the state of his mind?Medical treatment & counseling brought him round but the antagonistic atmosphere at home compelled his father to take a separate room for him.So he was ousted from his home & separated from his mother.He yearned for her love & attention,but she was too  beleaguered by her failing health & other problems to provide solace to him.He was chided for being a wastrel.He was intelligent,computer savvy & wanted to take up a job in teaching line but who would employ him?The stigma sticking to his condition destroyed all chances.
All this & a thousand other factors combined to make a mess of a once promising life.

It is exactly twenty years since all this started.During these years he has also gone through the trauma of a disastrous marriage & divorce.There have been numerous attempts to find a job,make it work & then see it vanishing.He suffered relapses when stress became too much.Twice he thought of committing suicide.The first time it was before he contacted me.At that time his friends on the internet saved him.The second time he came to know of my helpline & decided to fight the circumstances after some counseling.(In fact he was the first of my counselees to urge me to come online;which i did after a lot of thinking).

Anyhow the gist of the matter is that fighting against unimaginable odds;he has managed to keep himself afloat.But how can you stonewall the alterations to your personality,which this disease brings in it's wake?And how can you ignore,or not be hurt by the discrimination which this disease & the allied mannerisms evoke in family,friends,co-workers & the society at large?Perhaps the seeds of Schizophrenia were latent in his genes,because while his brother is an anti-social character;his father too had moments of eccentricity.But given congenial environment, he could have led a normal life.It was the stress brought about by ragging which did him in.That one episode changed everything for him & his family;but those who ragged him do not even know what they have done to his body,mind & soul !