This is my first post after a break of nearly four months. You may know that I had taken a course on ‘Creative Writing’ if you had read this post, in which I explain why I had not been writing for the blog for a while. As part of the curriculum, we were given numerous exercises. One of them was to write a story based on a newspaper headline. The following story was my submission (with some tweaks) for the same. Although it is not about feminism per se, I am sure you will be able to see how it fits with the theme of this blog. I have attached the newspaper headline at the end of the story. I hope you enjoy it!
Kadambari came home exhausted after her day’s work at the clinic. The same kind of cases required her expert opinion almost every weekend- burnout due to long working hours. Kadambari faced the same issue even though she advocated against it. But, that was the nature of her job. She removed her shoes, kept her bag on the shelf and laid down on the couch.
A gentle hand caressed her hair along with another, albeit a much smaller one. “Can you get Amma’s dinner, Ezhil?” asked a deep voice. A boy of five walked softly but swiftly and got a plate with his mother’s favourite dinner- hot sevai (rice vermicelli) of different flavours like lemon, onion and coconut. It was already 8:00 PM. The rest of the family had already eaten. “Kadambari, it is time for dinner”, said the same deep voice that had spoken to the small boy. There was no response. “Amma, please get up”, said a squeaky voice that belonged to a three-year-old girl who stopped stroking her mother’s hair and instead pulled the flap of her kurti. Dizzily, Kadambari’s eyes slowly opened. Her eyes then darted to the clock on the wall, and suddenly she jolted.
“Have I been sleeping for two hours already?! Suriya, you shouldn’t have let me sleep. I need to box as soon as I come before I can do anything else. I have volunteering work late in the night as well.” Suriya put his bony arm around her shoulders and said, “Relax, it is a Sunday! You have the coming two days to rest.” She shook her head in disapproval and saw her dinner plate already next to her on a table. Kadambari smiled, lifted Ezhil and made him sit next to her. She kissed him on his cheek, did the same with Yazhini and began having her meal. “Can’t believe you added salt correctly today!” she joked at her husband purposefully, although he was pretty good at cooking.
The family spent time together by reading bedtime stories, listening to the radio and playing chess. The kids received their goodnight kisses and hugs and were put to rest. Her volunteering work was about to begin. She logged into the NGO’s portal and checked her messages. A notification was present. A message from her recurring patient was unread in her inbox. “Madam, I will be late by an hour. Let us meet at 11:30 pm.” She replied with a confirmation. She looked through her notes she had made on her NGO clients. She still had an hour to go, so she decided to take in a new client for a 45 minutes session.
In her 15 years of experience, most of her clients through the NGO were college-going students. They would usually be up at odd times of the night and would be in a position to talk/text only then. Her patient, who was supposed to text her at 11:30 PM, was also a college-going student and lived with his parents. He could not tell them about his therapy sessions due to the stigma that still prevailed despite it being three years since the pandemic ended in 2022. He would have to wait until the house quietened. He would sit in the bathroom to avoid any risk and attend his sessions only via text on Sundays and Mondays. Every volunteer had to be available for three hours, twice a week. The lad had been suffering from chronic depression and suicidal behaviours due to his college’s environment. He had been unable to adjust to the taxing curriculum load that was thrust upon him. The transition from school to college had been very rugged for him. Since the NGO had a tie-up with his institution, she could try to push for a semester break. However, he was reluctant as his parents would not take it seriously. She had to ask his parents to meet her virtually soon to make them understand his situation. Today’s session went the same way; he was still reluctant to let the cat out of the bag in front of his parents. She asked him to come again tomorrow, same time, to resolve his problem.
After finishing her work, she shut down her laptop at 1:10 AM and went to sleep.
Bam Bam Bam. Thud Thud Thud.
“Ughhhh!” screamed Kadambari as she woke up from her sleep, extremely frustrated with the construction noise from her neighbouring apartment. The sun had just risen, and she had had only five and a half hours of sleep. She had neither boxed nor meditated the previous night after coming from work to actively forget her clients’ problems so that she can preserve her mental peace. The noise only added fuel to the fire. She aggressively brushed her teeth, put on her boxing gloves and began smacking the punching bag hanging from the ceiling of her workroom as hard as she could for 10 minutes continuously. “That feels better”, she thought to herself. She removed her gloves, sat down on her yoga mat and began meditating for 10 minutes to calm herself. After relaxing her mind and body, she went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea for herself. The TV was on at a low volume, displaying the news anchor who was reading the headlines. Suriya was busy cooking the day’s meals. She hugged him from behind to surprise him. He jerked and, in the process, spilt water, which was about to be added to the boiling rasam (a South-Indian soup eaten with steamed rice). “You woke up so early? Why don’t you go back to sleep?” he asked with concern. She did not utter a word and merely pointed towards the window peeking into the neighbour’s demolished house. Her husband sighed and said, “It will be over today. After this, there won’t be any noise for another six months, I guess.”
Now that she was wide awake, she proceeded to help him send the kids off to school. She combed their hairs, helped them put on their uniform dresses and filled their water bottles. She fed them breakfast. By then, Suriya had finished packing their boxes with food. The school bus arrived at 7:40 AM. They waved at their kids as the bus drove out of their sight.
The couple sat on the floor and had their breakfast. “Did you find the bug?”, Kadambari asked as she chewed a morsel of upma (a savoury, thick porridge made out of dry-roasted rice flour or semolina). “Yeah! It was such a small bug, but it could have cost us a lot of money. I finally solved it after breaking my head for nearly two hours.”, he replied. “That is pretty nice. We have all the day together then!” she beamed with happiness.
Suriya had changed his working schedule to spend time with his kids as well as his wife. He worked from home on Saturdays and took Mondays off instead. This way, he could be with his kids during the weekends and with his wife on Mondays. Kadambari was the chief psychologist of the Bengaluru Mental Health (BMH) Clinic, which was established in November 2022. During the pandemic, mental health deteriorated amongst people of all ages. In particular, students, WFH employees and parents were affected the most. Employees, in general, complained of prolonged work hours under the guise of “WFH” flexibility. Even before the pandemic hit, many professionals, especially from private industries, were forced to over-work beyond the time required. The pandemic merely brought these already prevailing issues under a greater light.
Funds were collected from the government, corporates as a part of their CSR and philanthropists to establish this clinic to address such concerns. Located on Whitefield Main Road, the hub of most tech companies, the clinic was open from Wednesday to Sunday. It was open over the weekend so that working professionals would get enough time to visit the clinic if they faced any issues in their professional/personal lives. Many companies still continued to be inconsiderate towards their employees’ working hours. They neither compensated appropriately for their employees' extra time nor let them leave after working for eight hours. In order to address these issues and formulate a national-level policy to ensure humane working conditions, the government is funding a project to collect data on such matters at the BMH Clinic.
Kadambari was one of the board members of the project. She had to work with other psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, biotech professionals and students to collect data, analyse it and present their conclusions to the government so that the policy can be implemented faster. Hence, her and her colleagues’ workload were higher.
Kadambari avoided having too many sessions with patients on a 1–1 basis in the office as she needed to spend most of her time working on this project. She would occasionally give an expert opinion if required by other doctors while handling certain patients. The clinic would be busy all the time as more and more people have come to realise the importance of mental health. Sometimes, patients would take a counselling session even when everything was going well, just as a regular mental health checkup.
Yazhini and Ezhil returned from school by noon. The family had lunch and then played carom together. After a few rounds, the children went to their beds for their afternoon nap. Suriya sat down on the reclining chair and began reading the newspaper. Kadambari checked her watch, and it showed 1:50 PM.
She opened Zoom on her laptop and started the meeting for the weekly Virtual Therapy session from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM. It was her first meeting after a month’s break. The rest of the clinic’s therapists joined in. Kadambari greeted them all. She assigned each of them to their respective breakout room. It was mandatory for every therapist to attend so that their mental health was kept in check. The chief counsellors, psychologists and psychiatrists were responsible for hosting these sessions. After the one-hour-long group therapy session ended, any of the members of the clinic could approach the chiefs for a 1–1 half an hour therapy session in case they needed individual attention. Last month, Kadambari could not host any of these sessions because she was mentally disturbed by her sister-in-law’s health condition. She got a severe heart attack that could have easily resulted in her death. Kadambari received counselling sessions throughout the month from her colleague. This was the system in place- therapists helped each other maintain their well being to ensure that they could provide the best care for their patients.
Once the session ended, Kadambari saved the notes she had taken during the meeting. She then boxed and meditated. The family went to a nearby park. The couple strolled around the park as they watched their kids play. They picked up Kadambari’s parents and drove to a restaurant to have their dinner. They dropped them on the way and reached home by 9:00 PM.
The family read together, played chess and listened to the radio. Everyone except Kadambari fell asleep. She opened her laptop, logged into the NGO’s portal, and the cycle continued.
This is the news headline on which I have written the story. I hope you enjoyed it. :-)
