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New Delhi, a new anthology of 26 stories translated from 17 Indian languages, attempts to bring the major issue of mental health from the margins to the centre, by highlighting that it is not just an individual problem, but a deep societal problem, inseparable from poverty, patriarchy and cultural neglect.
“Bandaged Moments: Mental Health Stories by Women Writers from Indian Languages” is edited by Nabanita Sengupta and Nishi Pulugurtha and published by Nioi Books.
Mental health in India often appears in two clearly divided frames. On the one hand, medical handbooks and psychiatric manuals reduce the human experience to a list of symptoms. On the other hand, wellness campaigns and motivational speeches turn suffering into stories of triumph and recovery.
This anthology refuses to sanitize or romanticize suffering. Instead, it asks readers to sit with fragmented lives, unresolved endings, and the complex intersection between personal suffering and social violence.
There is great diversity of terrain in the collection. The stories are not tied to any one diagnosis or type of crisis.
In “Ferns in the Moonlight”, a woman’s deep sense of insignificance grows out of lost relationships, while “Flying Fish” reduces her world to glimpses of a man abandoned by love, his schizophrenia collapsing her social life into isolation.
“Turn my bad karma into good” reflects the selective mutation born out of shame and fear of marriage, while “Laughter’s Story” turns compulsive laughter into both coping and a cry for help.
Elsewhere, psychosis and delusions take center stage, presenting us with the reality of most women, mixed with a bit of mysticism along with the obvious variation in mental health across India.
This anthology never allows readers to imagine mental illness as a static thing – it multiplies and divides it in different contexts.
Domestic suffocation is another recurring motif. In “Sanjeevani”, dowry humiliation drives a young wife to take suicidal steps, while in “Bleak Noon” the culmination of poverty, forced marriage and systemic hypocrisy is so severe that it results in inconsolable laughter and tears in public.
These stories are a reminder that mental health in the Indian context cannot be separated from the patriarchal marriage system, caste pressures and economic precarity.
Many stories end not with healing but with relapse or obscurity.
In “Taj Mahal”, humiliation turns into suicide from a tower. “The Houses of the Seasons Are Empty” lingers on the suicidal ideation without resolution. In resisting liberation, these stories seem more true to the ongoing mess of psychological conflict.
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