For those who are mentally challenged
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Maswood Alam Khan
For the last few months my workload in office was so heavy that I thought I needed a break. With a view to enjoying a break and also to experiencing beforehand the taste of a retired life I took a long leave from office for 17 days since the first day of this month.
In the morning I go out to an office or to a market to settle some household issues. In the afternoon I am completely free and lonely in my apartment having nothing much to do except reading or viewing television programmes. Now I have been realizing what an "empty nest syndrome" is like with my only son far away in North America.
I took this freedom as an opportunity to visit my friends and relations, especially those friends who have some family problems to see for myself if I could be of any help to them, financially or morally. Most of the families I have visited during the last few days are desperately grappling with their family troubles like 'his or her spouse has been jobless', 'a child has been a drug addict', 'pains of bearing the burden of an insane member in the family', 'strained marital relationship' etc.
Only a mother knows what it is like when she discovers that her grown child cannot walk when at his age he is supposed to run. Gradually she discovers that her child is facing difficulties in keeping pace with other children of his age; he is delaying in learning the basic skills to talk, to memorise, to solve trivial problems or to take care of his own self.
When finally the doctor says that the child is mentally retarded his parents embark upon a painful odyssey that can be empathized only by those who underwent a similar experience. The experience is excruciating.
The mentally retarded children who are born of well-to-do families are somewhat lucky as they may get intensive support and supervision in their entire life. But in our country most of the retarded children who are born to poor parents are condemned to a pathetic life because their parents themselves suffer from mental deprivation, that is lacking rational thinking, and are superstitious to the hilt.
When a doctor diagnoses a mental patient he classifies the patient in any of the medical terminologies like schizophrenic, insane, psychopath, mentally retarded, imbecile, moron etc. These clinical terms have acquired some pejorative and shameful connotations in our social vocabulary. So, the phrase "mentally challenged" is nowadays used outside a clinic as a decent euphemism meant to subsume all mental anxieties and disorders.
Those who are mentally challenged are in most cases cold and silent. Apparently they look perfectly normal. They are not deaf or dumb. But, they are too weak to talk. They scream only when they are physically hurt. They can't express their mental pains. They don't elicit sympathy from you the way a physically handicapped destitute can. They don't know how to beg. They don't know how to complain either. Unless someone helps them on his own they are left to suffer and die in silence.
Not only the clinically confirmed psychiatric patients are mentally challenged; those first-degree relations who take care of these patients are also mentally challenged to an extent that puts them on the threshold of becoming insane themselves if anyone of them finds the burden of a patient's dependency on him or her too heavy to bear.
When any relationship begins to sour the concerned relatives reflexively magnify some of their emotions that display betrayal, disappointment, shattered dreams, and deadly silence. They lose their footing, security, future, and, perhaps, each other.
I know a young lady. She had fallen in love with her classmate in their university days and later got married. I was introduced to her husband who was a man of pleasing personality. They enjoyed a happy conjugal life for a couple of years till a point when she discovered that her hubby was not normal. She told herself, "He will be alright in a matter of time". She sugarcoated her worries thinking that once her husband finds a better job he would be as normal as everybody is. She shut the evidence of her husband's abnormal behaviour out of her thinking. But, at one stage when her husband became too jittery and quarrelsome, or perhaps too burdensome, her sugarcoated worries got bared.
The lady got a good job in a company while the man was still looking around for a better career. The man ultimately became clinically insane and their marriage got fizzled out. The man was left in the lurch to experience a lonely life. The experience of insanity coupled with loneliness and insecurity must be unbearable, I can only reckon.
Though the lady is more known to me than the man, I don't know why, I felt empathy more for the man than for the lady. I imagined: "Was she tired of her husband's dependency on her? What did he say or how did he feel when he came to learn that his wife was divorcing him only because he was insane? Or, maybe, (I imagined to console myself) he was mentally too disturbed to sense the emotional wreck".
A colleague of mine who is very jovial otherwise is tormented by feelings of haplessness as one of his three adult sons has become a drug addict, his second son is a failure in academia and his third son is yet to find a job. My colleague, who of late seems to have been a little delirious, will be retiring from his job next November. He is now mentally challenged and I would not be surprised if he becomes insane after his retirement.
Another senior colleague of mine who was popularly known as 'Dayal Baba' (the most generous man) in Agrani Bank has now been working in a private bank. No employee in Agrani Bank---the senior most executive or the junior most clerk---can say that his or her personal or official problems were not solved after he or she had approached Dayal Baba. Dayal Baba was not a dervish. He had a charismatic quality to win people's hearts and he used to maintain connections with the powerhouses of the country. Now our Dayal Baba himself is in a problem and its solution seems far-fetched.
The second son of Dayal Baba was a gifted genius when he was a student of Barisal Cadet College. The son was always very inquisitive. Enamoured by religious sermons heard from one Murari Papu over an Indian TV channel the son felt inspired to delve deep into Hindu mythology. One day he declared to his father (our Dayal Baba, a perfect Muslim) that he had decided to be converted into a Hindu. Though awestruck, Dayal Baba quickly replied: "No problem. It is your freedom to choose a religion or a faith." The son was allowed to visit the Ram Krishna temple regularly. Later it was diagnosed that he got mentally broken down for his overwhelming intellectual exertion. Dayal Baba's son is now under a long-term psychiatric treatment.
Those who are not insane, those who don't have any family or emotional burden, and those who are not in financial hardship either may also be mentally challenged. They are aged and in most cases they are terribly lonely. Lonely because they are divorcees or they have no child or their children don't care them.
On the 5th September, as I was reading the sad news about the gruesome murder of a septuagenarian woman named Sajeda Amin by a recently appointed domestic help at her own Central Road residence at Dhanmondi I wondered the childless lonely lady at 70 could perhaps be safe had she chosen to spend her twilight years in a secure 'old home'. She perhaps didn't want to part with her home she owned by heredity. I imagined: "What did she say or how did she feel when the boy servant stalked her and was about to gag or hit her? Maybe, she was hit (I imagined to console myself) when she was in deep sleep".
It is impossible to find out how many psychiatric patients are there in Bangladesh, let alone how many are mentally challenged or disturbed. Because the majority of the mental patients are contained within locked rooms by their families who deem having a mental patient in the family a social disgrace. Our village people view mental illness as a curse and those who are found mentally disturbed are believed to have been haunted by demons, evil spirits or jinnee; mentally ill patients are forced to undergo exorcisms and take traditional herbal remedies.
The public deems diseases like swine flu and AIDS fatal as both the patients and their guardians can speak out loudly about their pains and agonies. But diseases like schizophrenia and autism are not quite known to the public as the patients cannot express their pains and the guardians are ashamed of their schizophrenic or autistic custodies.
Who will then speak out on their behalf? You and I. You and I know who among our relations and friends are groaning in silence with their minds disturbed. Shouldn't you and I give a surprise visit to one of them with a tiffin-career full of foods, candies and delicacies? Shouldn't you and I tickle an autistic child to make her smile?
The writer is a banker. He can be reached at e-mail:
maswood@hotmail.com
For the last few months my workload in office was so heavy that I thought I needed a break. With a view to enjoying a break and also to experiencing beforehand the taste of a retired life I took a long leave from office for 17 days since the first day of this month.
In the morning I go out to an office or to a market to settle some household issues. In the afternoon I am completely free and lonely in my apartment having nothing much to do except reading or viewing television programmes. Now I have been realizing what an "empty nest syndrome" is like with my only son far away in North America.
I took this freedom as an opportunity to visit my friends and relations, especially those friends who have some family problems to see for myself if I could be of any help to them, financially or morally. Most of the families I have visited during the last few days are desperately grappling with their family troubles like 'his or her spouse has been jobless', 'a child has been a drug addict', 'pains of bearing the burden of an insane member in the family', 'strained marital relationship' etc.
Only a mother knows what it is like when she discovers that her grown child cannot walk when at his age he is supposed to run. Gradually she discovers that her child is facing difficulties in keeping pace with other children of his age; he is delaying in learning the basic skills to talk, to memorise, to solve trivial problems or to take care of his own self.
When finally the doctor says that the child is mentally retarded his parents embark upon a painful odyssey that can be empathized only by those who underwent a similar experience. The experience is excruciating.
The mentally retarded children who are born of well-to-do families are somewhat lucky as they may get intensive support and supervision in their entire life. But in our country most of the retarded children who are born to poor parents are condemned to a pathetic life because their parents themselves suffer from mental deprivation, that is lacking rational thinking, and are superstitious to the hilt.
When a doctor diagnoses a mental patient he classifies the patient in any of the medical terminologies like schizophrenic, insane, psychopath, mentally retarded, imbecile, moron etc. These clinical terms have acquired some pejorative and shameful connotations in our social vocabulary. So, the phrase "mentally challenged" is nowadays used outside a clinic as a decent euphemism meant to subsume all mental anxieties and disorders.
Those who are mentally challenged are in most cases cold and silent. Apparently they look perfectly normal. They are not deaf or dumb. But, they are too weak to talk. They scream only when they are physically hurt. They can't express their mental pains. They don't elicit sympathy from you the way a physically handicapped destitute can. They don't know how to beg. They don't know how to complain either. Unless someone helps them on his own they are left to suffer and die in silence.
Not only the clinically confirmed psychiatric patients are mentally challenged; those first-degree relations who take care of these patients are also mentally challenged to an extent that puts them on the threshold of becoming insane themselves if anyone of them finds the burden of a patient's dependency on him or her too heavy to bear.
When any relationship begins to sour the concerned relatives reflexively magnify some of their emotions that display betrayal, disappointment, shattered dreams, and deadly silence. They lose their footing, security, future, and, perhaps, each other.
I know a young lady. She had fallen in love with her classmate in their university days and later got married. I was introduced to her husband who was a man of pleasing personality. They enjoyed a happy conjugal life for a couple of years till a point when she discovered that her hubby was not normal. She told herself, "He will be alright in a matter of time". She sugarcoated her worries thinking that once her husband finds a better job he would be as normal as everybody is. She shut the evidence of her husband's abnormal behaviour out of her thinking. But, at one stage when her husband became too jittery and quarrelsome, or perhaps too burdensome, her sugarcoated worries got bared.
The lady got a good job in a company while the man was still looking around for a better career. The man ultimately became clinically insane and their marriage got fizzled out. The man was left in the lurch to experience a lonely life. The experience of insanity coupled with loneliness and insecurity must be unbearable, I can only reckon.
Though the lady is more known to me than the man, I don't know why, I felt empathy more for the man than for the lady. I imagined: "Was she tired of her husband's dependency on her? What did he say or how did he feel when he came to learn that his wife was divorcing him only because he was insane? Or, maybe, (I imagined to console myself) he was mentally too disturbed to sense the emotional wreck".
A colleague of mine who is very jovial otherwise is tormented by feelings of haplessness as one of his three adult sons has become a drug addict, his second son is a failure in academia and his third son is yet to find a job. My colleague, who of late seems to have been a little delirious, will be retiring from his job next November. He is now mentally challenged and I would not be surprised if he becomes insane after his retirement.
Another senior colleague of mine who was popularly known as 'Dayal Baba' (the most generous man) in Agrani Bank has now been working in a private bank. No employee in Agrani Bank---the senior most executive or the junior most clerk---can say that his or her personal or official problems were not solved after he or she had approached Dayal Baba. Dayal Baba was not a dervish. He had a charismatic quality to win people's hearts and he used to maintain connections with the powerhouses of the country. Now our Dayal Baba himself is in a problem and its solution seems far-fetched.
The second son of Dayal Baba was a gifted genius when he was a student of Barisal Cadet College. The son was always very inquisitive. Enamoured by religious sermons heard from one Murari Papu over an Indian TV channel the son felt inspired to delve deep into Hindu mythology. One day he declared to his father (our Dayal Baba, a perfect Muslim) that he had decided to be converted into a Hindu. Though awestruck, Dayal Baba quickly replied: "No problem. It is your freedom to choose a religion or a faith." The son was allowed to visit the Ram Krishna temple regularly. Later it was diagnosed that he got mentally broken down for his overwhelming intellectual exertion. Dayal Baba's son is now under a long-term psychiatric treatment.
Those who are not insane, those who don't have any family or emotional burden, and those who are not in financial hardship either may also be mentally challenged. They are aged and in most cases they are terribly lonely. Lonely because they are divorcees or they have no child or their children don't care them.
On the 5th September, as I was reading the sad news about the gruesome murder of a septuagenarian woman named Sajeda Amin by a recently appointed domestic help at her own Central Road residence at Dhanmondi I wondered the childless lonely lady at 70 could perhaps be safe had she chosen to spend her twilight years in a secure 'old home'. She perhaps didn't want to part with her home she owned by heredity. I imagined: "What did she say or how did she feel when the boy servant stalked her and was about to gag or hit her? Maybe, she was hit (I imagined to console myself) when she was in deep sleep".
It is impossible to find out how many psychiatric patients are there in Bangladesh, let alone how many are mentally challenged or disturbed. Because the majority of the mental patients are contained within locked rooms by their families who deem having a mental patient in the family a social disgrace. Our village people view mental illness as a curse and those who are found mentally disturbed are believed to have been haunted by demons, evil spirits or jinnee; mentally ill patients are forced to undergo exorcisms and take traditional herbal remedies.
The public deems diseases like swine flu and AIDS fatal as both the patients and their guardians can speak out loudly about their pains and agonies. But diseases like schizophrenia and autism are not quite known to the public as the patients cannot express their pains and the guardians are ashamed of their schizophrenic or autistic custodies.
Who will then speak out on their behalf? You and I. You and I know who among our relations and friends are groaning in silence with their minds disturbed. Shouldn't you and I give a surprise visit to one of them with a tiffin-career full of foods, candies and delicacies? Shouldn't you and I tickle an autistic child to make her smile?
The writer is a banker. He can be reached at e-mail:
maswood@hotmail.com