Short Story I

People often associate depression with one who has lost all will to live, who goes on living everyday life with a deep furrowed frown and who walks by parks shouting and yelling on all the children for creating a ruckus. Even Vyom was amongst the majority who have this line of thought, until the day he was released from the emergency ward of the multispecialty hospital near his home. The next few days were spent running from one specialist doctor to another in a bid to ascertain what was wrong with his all but 30 years-old body. After spending long hours in the waiting rooms of a cardiologist, a neurologist and an endocrinologist, all his appointments ran for almost the same duration of five minutes in which different medical practitioners told him the same thing- that there was nothing wrong with his heart, nor his neurological linkages, nor his sugar levels and thyroid glands. His final appointment was scheduled for 7:30 PM with Dr. Gargoo (MBBS, MRCPsych), psychiatrist, who assured Vyom that what he experienced the other night at his home were the classic symptoms of a non-trigger-induced panic attack, often a symptom of a bigger condition of anxiety and/or depression.

Day 01:

Vyom lay sleeping on his bed, his hair a little damp and the bedsheet a light grey in colour around his body, as if outlining a dead body at a crime scene, on the otherwise white cotton sheet. It was a surprisingly hot and sweltering morning with the sun firing down with all its might, the clock on his side table reading 8:36 AM. Still groggy with the aftereffects of the SOS medicine Dr. Gargoo had prescribed, Vyom left the bed, all the joints in his body creaking like the wooden flooring of an abandoned log cabin. Rising slowly from the bed stretching his arms wide, he stepped inside the bathroom. Feeling a lot fresher afterward, he put the coffee pot on the burner and fetched the day’s newspaper lying on the floor outside his apartment. It was a modest kitchen in a sparsely furnished home, which almost gave an impression that its occupants were on the process of moving out. The living room had one sofa which was facing a bare wall. No coffee table, no side table and the floor bare. It looked like someone gave up on the idea of setting up the room mid-way into the process. There was a big bookshelf on one of the walls, overflowing with books and in dire need of dusting. A writing desk adjacent to the bookshelf, contrastingly clean and organised, with beautifully stacked writing pads in one corner beside a small potted plant and a pen stand next to it. The chair looked like it was originally bought to be placed with the dining table but found its way to the desk instead. The dining table was thus paired with a high stool, on which Vyom was perched uncomfortably, flipping the pages idly- only glancing through the headlines.

Some things heard in our early childhood get so deeply ingrained in our minds, that we keep following it unknowingly, semi-consciously, without ever stopping to ask ourselves why we are still doing it. Reading the morning newspaper before starting his day was one such activity for Vyom. “There should always be a routine you follow as soon as you wake up,” his father used to tell him as he was growing up, “brush your teeth, drink your milk and read about world events.” He had replaced the glass of milk with a cup of coffee, but the rest of it had remained unchanged. He would read the paper everyday although he knew about all the happenings when he had read about them in real-time on X or some other app on his phone. He tossed the paper aside as the bell rang and opened the door for Subhas, his cook cum cleaner cum cheerleader. “How are the mornings so hot already?” he complained while entering, carrying bags full of fruits and vegetables, “I’ll cut some fruits and cook breakfast; you please take a shower. This heat is unbearable.”

**

Vyom was 15 minutes early for his first appointment with Ms. Paridhi Shankar, the therapist Dr. Gargoo had recommended. He walked from the parking lot of the small building located right around the corner from his favourite café. The lady behind the reception asked him to sit in the waiting area. The walls were decorated with drawings and paintings of different sizes and colours, all by kids. One corner of the wall had the certificates and accolades hung which Ms. Shankar had received over her career of 11 years as a therapist. ‘Certified Hypnotist’, one such certificate read and Vyom was immediately picturing her with a crystal ball in front of her and a pocket watch swinging like a pendulum from one of her hands. He thought of getting up and leaving just when the door to Ms. Shankar’s room swung open and a girl walked out smiling and waving back to Ms. Shankar. “Vyom?” asked Ms. Shankar as she saw him standing near the wall of fame, “please give me 2 minutes” she said after he nodded.

Ms. Shankar waved him inside as she crossed him where he was sitting on the chair. It was a small windowless room, but cozy and comfortable. She had a big green armchair laid out in the middle of the room for herself, on which she seemed to look even smaller than her already small frame. The chair looked very relaxing with a tall back and round, soft armrests. There was a small couch right opposite her which Vyom presumed was for him and he took one corner and settled into it. “Too upright” he thought to himself but said nothing.

“Hi. My name is Paridhi and I am a psychologist. I did most of my studying in Bombay and London. I have been doing therapy sessions since the last eleven years. Dr. Gargoo called me to update about your medical condition and to give a bit of history and his own diagnosis. I know Dr. Gargoo since a long time and value his opinions very highly. Now, why don’t you tell me about yourself and why you think you are here and your expectations from me and our session?” said Ms. Shankar in a sort of a memorised performance.

“Hi. I am Vyom. It is a pleasure to meet you.” I started hesitatingly, “Honestly, I do not know what to expect from these sessions. The only time I have seen people visit a shrink, uh sorry I said shrink. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not? Do you consider it abusive?”

“Well, I should have asked first if I can call you that or not?”

“Do you always feel such need for approval?”

“Never thought about it that way, honestly.”

“Ok. You can call me a shrink if that is what comes to your mind as the first word”, Ms. Shankar replied while she started writing something down on the clip board that was resting on her lap since Vyom walked in.

“No. I mean, Ok. My only exposure to the profession has been through movies or books, that too mostly from the Western countries. When I tried to find your address on Google Maps, I was surprised to see so many other psychological clinics nearby. I never thought about mental health as a problem that infests my little world as well. I feel like a frog living in a well when I am saying it out aloud. So, I do not really know what to expect, maybe some big revelation of how some childhood trauma is responsible for how I am feeling and what I am experiencing right now.” he said, overcoming the embarrassment of calling her a shrink.

“Understood. There might not be a big eureka moment where everything can be pinned down to one instance or experience. Saying that, I also want to explain my method of approaching the problems. I follow Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, where we try to understand your thinking pattern and try to modify it in a way which allows you an opportunity to lessen your anxiety. We will not be focusing much on memories and possible traumatic events which otherwise do not directly affect you presently.

“If you were to ask me what I am expecting from these sessions for you, it is that we can help you find triggers and how to handle them in a healthy way. After two weeks, that is four sessions, I will update Dr. Gargoo before your scheduled appointment with him. So, what do you feel about this?” she asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

The session went on for another 43 minutes, in total, 55 minutes to the clock. Vyom walked out feeling mentally battered and bruised. He lit a cigarette and walked to the café nearby to clear his head.

Day 04:

“You know, I thought a lot about what you asked me the other day. (Life has become a drab, a drag, a windless-day flag.) There is nothing that excites me nearly as much as the thought of going back home and being alone. (And in that loneliness, I have had a chance to peek inside the deep cracks of the dark well of despair.) When at home, there are only one of two things I am doing, writing or reading. I do not remember the last time I saw a movie or television. First, I stopped calling people, and now I have even stopped receiving their calls.” Vyom replied to Ms. Shankar at his second session with her. She had asked him to ponder over what he thinks might be the reason for his symptoms of depression in their last (first?) session. Such level of introspection might be injurious to health (further to the already deteriorating health), she hadn’t mentioned. He felt like he had occupied a space inside the deep cracks of the dark well of despair he occasionally liked to voyeur upon.

“Waking up early in the morning seems an impossibility during the sleepless wee hours of night and yet I find myself woken up way before the agreed time the alarm is set for. I have been working-from-home since I started writing professionally, before it was the new normal. I spend 4-6 hours everyday typing away at my keyboard in different corners of my small one-bedroom apartment.

“Occasionally, I head out to a café nearby, in fact the one right at the corner from here, Papa Americano. I love their coffee and bagels. You should try it sometime.”

“I do like their coffee. Quite a kick it gives me.”

“Finding good coffee is the closest thing to nirvana I have felt. Haha” he could see no reaction on Ms. Shankar’s face in response to his very funny joke.

“Have you tried mindfulness or any other form of meditation, Vyom?” she asked him as a response to his joke. Way to ruin a punchline, Ms. Shankar.

“Yes, I tried mindfulness through an app during the lockdown. They had made the membership free during the starting. But then I never actually bought the membership after the complimentary trial period ended. Hence, I stopped doing it. Plus, I don’t think it was really working. I would just end up getting lost in my train of thoughts and lose all focus. I think I am incapable of meditating.”

“There is no wrong or right way to meditate. It is an experience where everyone will feel differently. It is a unique journey into the depths of your unconscious mind.”

He noted it down on the pad he was carrying. It seemed important, deep, meaningful. He kept nodding till he finished writing it. She was staring at him the entire time, the weight of her eyes resting on his hands, making it difficult to write.

“Have you been feeling anxious or overwhelmed in the past few days?”

“Ya. And mostly because of all the questions I have been asking myself since our last session.”

“So, the medicines are not working, then?”

“They are only good to make me nauseous and sleepy. I find myself yawning the entire day.”

“That is quite a common side-effect because the hormones being released in your brain is asking it to relax and hence causing a series of yawns even when you are not sleepy. Maybe increasing the dosage will help.”

“No. Please. I cannot write already; stronger medicines will only make me more useless.”

“You can discuss your concerns with Dr. Gargoo but I assure you there will be no such impact on your everyday life.”

So far, therapy felt more like a punishment and less like a treatment. Hopefully, this was the prick of the needle he was feeling before the medicine is pushed inside and starts healing the wound.

After the session got over, he again found himself walking half-mindedly to the corner café. Papa Americano – a place American only in name, not in style, offerings, or even gun violence. “Hello, welcome to Papa Americano. Good evening, sir. How are you today?” greeted the smiling barista, visibly happy seeing him again. “Good evening. I am great. How are you?” he smiled back at the omnipresent face of the café.

He nestled himself in a corner with his ‘thought journal’ in hand, battling with himself to focus on what he was thinking/feeling. It is amazing how your body refuses to give signs of its existence as soon as you put it under the microscope of introspection. The brain is incapable of just existing. It has to keep itself occupied. It keeps thinking about the uncertain future or the unalterable past, keeping its motor running; like the small exhaust fan at the corner of a public toilet, its presence totally meaningless, yet essential to give a false hope to the visitors. Yet, when you try to follow the workings of the brain, on what it is thinking about currently, it draws a blank. His attempt at focussing on his thoughts was disrupted by the aroma of a steaming cup of coffee. He immediately took the bait and shut the journal, shifting his entire focus on to the cup.

Day 03:

Vyom was sitting at his desk, writing the script of a yet unnamed movie. It was a horror-thriller, the most boring genre to write on for Vyom, but it was paying rather well, and so he wrote. He glanced at his clock and saw that it was almost 9 PM. He quickly finished writing the gruesome details of the victim’s murder and grabbed his wallet and phone and booked a cab to go see Rehaan. They were meeting at their usual hangout spot, a bar by the name of Damp Kitty, a pun so bad that they had to visit it, and it instantly became their favourite place for the great retro rock music they played and the delectable kebabs they served. Rehaan was his childhood friend – his only friend. As Vyom entered the bar, he saw Rehaan laughing animatedly with the barkeep. Rehaan slapped Vyom on his back before hugging him and told the barkeep how Vyom fought his way back from the clutches of death couple of days back. The barkeep now eyeing Vyom with sympathy as well as indifference; like a lizard with two independent eyeballs, one not knowing what the other is revealing. A waiter guided the two friends to the table chosen for them and noted down their order. Rehaan could hardly wait for the server to put the plates down and leave them in privacy.

“How did the therapy session go, bro?” Rehaan asked as soon as they were alone and free.

“It was… weird... but good… but very uncomfortable” Vyom replied, “it felt like I was being judged professionally.”

“You need a holiday, not a quack pretending to be a doctor.”

“Haha. I knew it. I just knew it. You had to be condescending about therapy as well. Of course!”

“Bro, trust me. Go on a backpack trip to Europe. Smoke some pot in Amsterdam, drink some Belgian beer and fuck some German bimbo and you will be back to being yourself in 15 days’ time.”

“Dr. Gargoo has asked me not to smoke marijuana till I am on medication.”

“WTF! Who the fuck is he? Please do not do this to yourself. You will be writing sober? Do these doctors even know you are a writer? Do they expect athletes to not go to the gym? Then how can you write without smoking? You have to get out of all this mess. These people get you hooked on to these medicines and trap you for life.”

“Dude, you literally explained our addiction to pot.”

“Are you trusting someone you’ve met once, over me?”

The pointless conversation continued till 3 drinks were downed and then it took a darker turn.

“What really happened before you thought you were dying?” asked Rehaan, with concern making his eyes watery and hazy. “Were you stressed about something?”

“Bhai, I was not stressed in particular about anything. I was writing at home. I had to finish editing the story before sending it out the next morning. I got a call from mom around 7-7:30 PM. We were just discussing work, my non-existent love life and her hormonal problems with menopause. Then she disconnected in a hurry. I could hear dad calling out her name. She is just so weird. She will not even tell him that she was talking to me. She will just lie. He does not just not love me; he stops my mom from loving me too. There is no one I have seen who is more self-centred and egocentric.” Vyom replied with a lot of hiccups and pauses.

“And that is when you started feeling uneasy because you were thinking all this?”

“No man. I did not even think about any of it that time. I just went back to work. For almost 2 hours I was just working and then I started feeling hungry. I went to the kitchen to cook and when I took out the pan, my hand was shaking. So, I kept the pan down and drank a glass of water and tried to calm myself down. Then my shoulder started to pain; like a sharp shooting pain, originating right at my deltoid and travelling all the way till my fingers. Then my back started to feel getting cramped and my chest also started cramping. I took a Disprin as an SOS and called you. You know the rest.” Vyom said, his hands trembling, forehead damp with sweat, either from reliving the horrid experience or the after effects of all the alcohol in his system.

Day 13:

Vyom was early for his appointment, as usual. He would rather wait for ten minutes than be late for a meeting. Ms. Shankar was having tea at the waiting area when he entered her office. She had a big smile on her face when she saw Vyom. The smile was so unexpected that Vyom stopped on his track, looked behind him to double check if he was the real target of that genuine smile. When he was sure he was not a collateral damage of a stray smile, he smiled back at Ms. Shankar and apologised for being early.

“Please have a seat. Would you like some tea?” asked Ms. Shankar, already signalling the receptionist to prepare a cup without waiting for Vyom’s response.

“No. Thank you!” Vyom replied, thinking about the cup of coffee he was already committed to drinking after the session at Papa Americano.

“I insist. It is a very good brew. I assure you will love it. Might even give you a caffeine kick.” Ms. Shankar pressed signalling the receptionist to bring the cup who had kept it back looking at Vyom’s reluctance.

Vyom carried the steaming cup of tea inside Ms. Shankar’s office, carefully putting it down first and the plopping on the sofa, suddenly recalling how straight its back was.

“How are you feeling, Vyom?” asked Ms. Shankar, her eyes reading the paper in her folder marked VYOM 21/08/22.

“Good. How are you?” Vyom replied, feeling tensed like it was the day of his class twelfth results.

“So, you are meeting Dr. Gargoo tomorrow.” Ms. Shankar replied, avoiding his polite enquiry entirely. “I think you are suffering anxiety and depression and my advice will be to start medication immediately.”

“OK.”

“Do you have any questions?” Ms. Shankar asked politely, meeting Vyom’s eyes for the first time.

“No.” Vyom replied feeling dejected.

A sudden feeling of remorse took hold of his body. The results were out and he had failed. Vyom felt a sudden pang of spasm take control of his stomach and his breakfast climbing back his oesophagus, the way it had gone down. He could feel everything that was discussed in his previous three sessions about the symptoms of a panic attack. The only difference this time was that instead of feeling a sense of helplessness and a fear of dying, his body fought back through the way of emotional breakdown. Hot tears started rolling down his cheeks and he started wailing like a child. Years of emotions which were bottled up inside, on the verge of an explosion, finally exploded. A pressure cooker which was ready to whistle finally released all the steam at the right time at the right place, in front of Ms. Shankar, inside her office- on her couch. All the hurt that had been accumulating over the years; all the hurt that had been swept under the rug because that is how men are supposed to be – tough and emotionless. All that hurt came gushing out of his eyes, no matter how much he tried to hold them back. All the emotions which did not come out in front of his parents, his friends, his lovers, his colleagues – people he had known for years. All that came out in front of a woman he had met two weeks back, thrice, for fifty-five minutes each. A woman who showed none of her own emotions; a woman who did not fake any sort of affinity for his friendship; a woman who was impossible to read for Vyom; a woman who genuinely wanted to help Vyom because she could see he was broken from inside. Vyom cried for a good part of the session and discussed his troubled relation with his parents for the rest of it.