12.08.2002 | 3:18 p.m.
a quick resurrection.

She wasn't a bad person. I remember wishing my mother was as liberal as she was. She let her kids scribble on the walls. Her daughter, only a year older than I am, always wore make-up,even when we were barely 6 and 7 years old. The nights I stayed over, she forced me to drink Bournvita before I went to bed. "Well,you should drink milk at your age.",she used to tell me. She yelled at us out of sheer fright when we climbed the tree in their yard. She placated me when her son pulled my plaits and made me cry. Her maternal instinct manifested itself in an odd mixture of non-chalance and warmth. It must have broken her heart when her son threatened to put her in an asylum. It must have broken his heart to threaten to put her into an asylum. Her children were my favourite playmates at one point. They looked after me like I was a little sister. And in many ways, that's what I was. I haven't seen them in five years. I haven't talked to them in ten.

Today, I hear, the daughter is a recluse and the son is a manic depressive. And yet, their faces glow softly with the illusion of normlacy. Any bias they must have had against mental illness slaps them sadly across their face everyday. Grappling with the fact that their mother now stalks the T.V repairman, they risk psychological damage themselves. Even worse is knowing that their father's martyrdom isn't completely warranted. His calculating and promiscous nature was never something he could conceal. Perhaps he drove her to this state; perhaps he lied about the start of his extra-marital affair - We only know one side of the story.

White-bread worlds aren't insulated from tragedy. Mental illness doesn't always emanate from broken homes and abject poverty. Not every "loon" dresses in antiseptic white and talks incoherently about pink elephants. Some of them wear Versace shirts that belie the disturbed minds behind them. In the dark, they perform masochistic acts and fantasise about ideal lives like all of us do. Being able to afford pre-packaged salad doesn't guarantee us normalcy. And who's to say normalcy exists in all its societal glory? We're all just human, living our lives the best we know how to. Strip of us of our humanity, and we'll scream. We scream, and we are stripped of our humanity. All that remains to be done is exist. Breathing in and out, reassured by the knowledge that one day, every single word and every single action will add up to a grand total of nothing. And that perhaps,every single one of us is mad.

deja vu? | jamais vu?