Anthology seeks to address mental health issue with 26 stories

New Delhi, Nov 7 (PTI) A new anthology of 26 stories, translated from 17 Indian languages, seeks to bring the key issue of mental health from the margins to the centre by highlighting that it is not simply an individual problem but a deeply social one, inseparable from poverty, patriarchy and cultural neglect.

"Bandaged Moments: Stories of Mental Health by Women Writers from Indian Languages" is edited by Nabanita Sengupta and Nishi Pulugurtha and published by Niyoi Books.

Mental health in India often appears in two sharply divided frames. On the one side, medical handbooks and psychiatric manuals flatten human experience into a list of symptoms. On the other hand, wellness campaigns and motivational speeches tend to repackage suffering into stories of triumph and recovery.

This anthology refuses to make suffering neat or palatable. Instead, it asks readers to sit with fractured lives, unresolved endings and the complicated interplay between individual anguish and social violence.

There is sheer diversity of terrain in the anthology. The stories are not bound to a single diagnosis or type of distress.

In "Ferns in the Moonlight", a woman's profound sense of insignificance grows out of lost relationships, while "Flying Fish" narrows its world to the peephole of a man abandoned by love, his schizophrenia collapsing his social life into isolation.

"Convert My Bad Karma to Good" depicts selective mutism born from shame and fear of marriage, whereas "Story of Laughter" transforms compulsive giggling into both a coping mechanism and cry for help.

Elsewhere, psychosis and delusion take centerstage, mixing a slight mysticism with the obvious othering of mental health across India to present to us the reality of most women as it exists.

The anthology never lets readers imagine mental illness as one stagnant thing - it multiplies and splinters it across contexts.

Domestic suffocation is another recurring motif. In "Sanjeevani", dowry humiliation drives a young wife to rehearsed suicidal gestures, while in "Bleak Noon", poverty, forced marriage and systemic hypocrisy culminates in a breakdown so severe it spills into incoherent laughter and tears in public.

These stories are a reminder that mental health in the Indian context cannot be separated from patriarchal marriage systems, caste pressures and economic precarity. Many stories end not with healing but with collapse or ambiguity.

In "Tajmahal", humiliation crescendos into suicide from a minaret. "Empty are the Houses of Seasons" lingers on suicidal ideation without resolution. In resisting redemption, these stories feel truer to the ongoing messiness of psychological struggle. PTI ZMN RB RB