Let me come clean about it at the outset that I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist or a spiritualist or a Guru or a Yogi or a philosopher, none of them.  I don’t earn my bread from this trade, nor do they bring in anything to me. The one truth that I know is that I know nothing. I am not interested in knowing things, no problem at not knowing them.

And yet I look at this topic – a sensitive issue that calls for the ‘expertise’ of nothing less than a ‘big expert’ and that nine out of ten people shy away from getting in on.

I felt called to share a few ideas with some of you to whom it matters, for quite a few people came to see me about it, last week. Here, I’m goanna give an account of what transpired in one-to-one meeting between this young man whose wife suffered bouts of depression and is now on medication under the care of a psychiatrist and me who he called upon for the counsel. I chose to bring up the case of this young man for I found him an epitome of a modern day young man or a millennial of today’s world.

One may rightly ask on what strength if any do I offer counseling if as I say I really know nothing? My ready-made answer goes, I do it not out of training but ‘experience’. I know that is not an honest answer, for the word ‘experience’ doesn’t mean anything to me for I find it yet another empty word. Can I ‘experience’ a thing without bringing my mind into play? This mind of mine is created by none other than me or the likes of me! I or others like me fed things into it to make it into a powerful thing that it is now. No matter how powerful it may be but how can I trust a thing that is my own creation now forcing me to believe that I do (experience) certain things? I know my mind is nothing more than a computer I’ve installed software in it, and it works on the strength of those programs. I don’t subscribe to the answer I give, and yet I do so because it works in the circumstances.  People live with an order of mind. They cannot function normally if and when the order is broken. Telling anything that doesn’t fit in with the order will mean putting the order under strain. I avoid it.

A more plausible and satisfactory explanation may be that some unexplored part of me knows things that my mind is in the dark about. The world has this far concentrated all its energy into knowing what human mind is and how it works. And the only instrument they have at their disposal is this mind to plumb a mind. The question is, a mind can know a whole world of things but can a mind know a mind? We use mind to know other things. What else do we have other than a mind to use and to know a mind itself? May be there are things that transcend human mind! And, we can’t get there unless our noisy mind goes completely quiet. This makes some sense.

Nonetheless, I use the word experience hereafter for the sake of the issue under discussion to avoid any confusion.

Before I drift off onto peripheral things let me come straight to the point.

This young man lived in a world he created for him to live in and his wife lived in a world she created for her to live in much in the same way as everyone of us create and live in our own sweet world of self-delusion until jolted out of it to face the unpalatable reality. Either of them lived in a world of their own without the other ever caring to walk in on each other’s world. Both of them observed same religion but came from diverse cultures. That means either of them are dyed and shaped in their specific socio-cultural color peculiar to their surrounding that played an important part in their personality build-up.

They have one daughter going to college, doing psychology.

I know quite a bit of his background without him disclosing it to me, for he too hails from the same place I come. I knew his family back home. Since he grew up in want in the family he was born in, all that mattered to him was money, success and happiness. Growing up in want had built him up to become the man that he was. Money is what the life is all about. Money by hook or by crook should come first! And it would be the magnet for success and happiness! This mantra of him drove him on. He landed a plum job away from home, moved away with family. He pocketed about three thousand dollars a month and it was a great deal of money as opposed to a paltry sum he made at home. That was five years ago.

Last week, he was right there before me desperate, anxious, and worried sitting on the couch in my drawing room not knowing beans about it. His wife was in hospital under observation for a failed suicide attempt. His daughter’s education was thrown into disarray. He had taken time out and come to see me all the way from the hospital.

I asked him to give me a candid account of how the whole story unfolded, for I still have in memory the excitement and euphoria the couple displayed while moving away.

He recounted to me that with this new job the going was good for the first two years. Everything went so well. Things were fine. They were entitled to an apartment, a free car and health insurance. He’d work extra hours, come home at late hour. Their daughter was put in the best school of the town. His wife would stay back at home, watch TV, cook food, and look after the house.

Things began to take ugly turn with the arrival of this woman living on the third floor above us. Her husband and I were colleague at one and the same company. I don’t know what came over her, she didn’t like the sight of this woman. May be she had a thing about her. A visceral dislike or a pathological hatred! May be she was acting on the instruction of some paranormal force! No way to know it! She wouldn’t say that. She’d talk all shit about her. On two occasions, she fought with her over trivial issues and even went to assaulting her. She would call her witch, an evil woman, an ominous thing and make all snarky remarks about her. She’d talk nonsense, always grumble to me about things, and when I try to knock sense into her, she’d get irritated and fly into temper. On return from work, I’d find her burying herself in room, dark, glum and crying.

I was advised to see a psychiatrist which I did. He gave her some suppressants, or rather anti-depressants. It worked on her. And then, one evening she swallowed one whole strip of sedatives apparently in an attempt to end it all. I rushed to the scene, took her to the hospital where they managed to bring her around.

Then and there, I made up my mind to quit the job and get back. But for this woman, she would have been alright, I guess. But you can’t just flush somebody out of the place for some irrational reasons! So, the only choice we had was to pack off and fly back home. We are home.

Last night we had a squabble over a petty little thing about this vacuum cleaner. She grumbled about the noise it made, said she didn’t like the noise and begged me to replace it with the Japanese one. Ours was India made. I argued about it that there was nothing wrong with it and that she should learn to live with things she dislikes and that I can’t pander to her every whim and fancy. I didn’t know that I should pay a heavy price for it.  She once again tried to kill herself by slashing her wrist, he said.

Oh! Well, I guess I got it, I said.

‘Now, before you there is a big challenge about how to put her back to her normal state of mind, yeah!’, I said.  He maintained a poker face.

‘I mean a frame of mind and a perspective that agree with you, or at least you find easy and comfortable to get on with, right!,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I mean to a tolerable degree. Her action and behavior need to be sensible, acceptable’, he said.

‘Now let’s look at it together’, I said, ‘It is not your comfort or convenience but her comfort and convenience that is of paramount importance. Do you agree!,’ I said. ‘Yeah, but ….,’ he wanted to put in words of protest but fell short of going further. ‘Her mind is giving her hell and that puts you at unease. ‘Am I right?’, I said. ‘That’s where the problem lies,’ he said. ‘So, it is she who needs all the help and support because your comfort and convenience hinges on her comfort and convenience. Your problem is secondary to her problem’, I said. The young man nodded head in approval. He demonstrated incredible patience with me. This was a good thing of him.

Now, here comes the question, ‘what can you willingly let go of or refrain from doing to pull her off her condition and to put her at ease and comfort?  It lies very much in your interest too, as you want to live at ease and peace. You want a solution of the problem on your terms. How do you know that the way you want to get it done is the right way? What if I say that you are wrong in mind and therefore the solution your mind is thinking cannot be right! You think she is wrong! She thinks you are wrong! The mother of this problem is the conflict of perception resulting from different frame of mind and that is out-and-out natural given the order we live in. So, it is not only she who needs correction. It is you who too needs it. May be you are the source of her problem without being aware of it!  And it never came to your head that this could be the case.’

He gaped at me with his mouth fell open. I could read on his face that my words didn’t go down well with him.

‘But, what’s wrong with me! Am I the one who is making mess of things? It is she who has gone wrong in mind and not me. I don’t dispute that she must be helped. But, will someone tell me how the hell I help her? I quit a plum job. I am jobless. Don’t know where I enroll my daughter! We are all in deep shit. Now, there is a limit to everything. I can’t lose my sleep over her forever nor can our daughter do that! She must wake up to the fact and behave responsibly and sensibly. I have taken her to a good doctor. Doing everything that I could do! I am willing to dig deep into my pocket. I am ready to take her to the end of the earth for correction. She has to understand it that there are two other members in the family and not every one of us are going to commit suicide with her’, he said. I could detect a tinge of anger and frustration in his voice.

Now it was my turn to respond.

I said ‘all of us have likes and dislikes. All of us have choices and preferences. That is perfectly normal. We take it for natural in the order we live in. By order I mean the order we have created in our head and put a label of mind on it. Let’s not talk about those few who have broken free from this order and transcended or lived above likes and dislikes, choices and preferences. They are exception. We don’t fall into that category. We must not forget that two people means two minds. They are nothing if not mind. They are woven from remotely opposite and difficult strands. It is impossible for anyone to track and unravel the strands twisted together into making this mind. The only way for two people to function in sync, in harmony, and in agreement is by an art of ‘compromise’. Compromise may be an easy word to hear and say without realizing its gravity but what it actually represents is far more challenging than one can imagine.  It calls for keeping oneself above one’s likes and dislikes, choices and preferences, and thus making oneself immune to those things. Moreover, it is equally important to lift oneself above what you and I consider sensible and insensible thing or responsible and irresponsible behavior.  We have made mind. We cannot unmake it. It is not like climbing up and down a tree. We have to live with our present day reality, not wishing or dreaming how it should have been.

In your case, replacing an Indian vacuum cleaner with a Japanese one cost a few thousand rupees and not a human life but it, God forbid, was close!’

‘Yeah, but anyone in their right sense find no wrong with the Indian one! Why should you piss money down the drain!  Money is not flying around you jump and pick! What if tomorrow she says she doesn’t like the dining table, or says the bathroom is in the wrong place, or replace the TV with the other one or doesn’t like the face of housemaid, and there’s no end to it,’, he said getting a little cranky.

‘I don’t see problem in what she likes or dislikes. I see problem in your reaction to her likes and dislikes. I see there is conflict in what you say and what you actually do. If you really are willing to dig deep into your pockets, as you say, and ready to leave no stone unturned in favor of her correction, then the petty problems she creates are only too small a price to pay compared to what you are willing to let go of.  If smashing a TV or throwing the housemaid out or knocking down a bathroom and rebuilding it can restore mental health of your wife, it is lot cheaper than the huge drain of money the doctor and the drug brings. The problem is not out there. The problem is in how you look at it. You may think that paying money to a doctor or a hospital is right use and throwing the TV into gutter is waste. I am not bothered about what waste is and what it isn’t. I’m interested in the result. If knocking the TV off table or throwing the housemaid out is goanna bring her relief, I see it worth doing than squandering money away at the hospital,’ I said.

The young man pondered over my words looking skeptically at me. He nodded, exhaling deeply.

‘You got to prepare yourself through rigorous discipline and turn yourself into something that stoically accepts, agrees and appreciates her whims and fancies. Once you can do that she’d find no reason to end her life. She needs space to live. She needs to be assured that there is someone who cares. You can create that space. Someone has to surrender oneself to change. In this case it is you. Your wife is not in a position to do so. It all falls to you. It is through your responses, actions, behaviors, attitude and reactions, you need to demonstrate that her life matters and that she is an indispensable member of the family and that you see to it that she sees it. Don’t expect her to change! You got to change! Once you are changed, I bet, she can’t help being changed. Money is important. Even more important than money is to create an environment of trust, compassion, affection, value and a meaning to life. That is how we have been shaped and framed in the order we are born in and live in. We can’t live without them’.

His cellphone rang. ‘She needs me. I must fly’, he said, promising to see me soon.