Keeping the Phone On

Before I had a language for it

I was in middle school when my father went back to college to pursue law. His classes and examinations happened in a different state, requiring him to travel frequently. Back then, he had a garment business contained in a small shop started by my grandfather. During his absence, my mother adopted dual responsibilities. In the morning, she would wake up early, ready her kids, me, and two of my siblings for school, cook for everyone, and then, around noon, go to the shop to run today’s business. She would come back in the evening and tend to us. But, at night, she would lie awake in restlessness and breathlessness. “Saans lene me dikkat ho rahi hai” … I would witness her taking long, deep breaths to soothe herself, but she’d stay mostly awake.

I am the eldest child of my parents. I saw their struggles a bit too close, from raising three children with crunching finances to navigating so many life changes together. My mother did not have a chance to go to college, but she handled everything from home to my father’s business in his absence. However, emotionally, there was clearly something that was distressing her. But being young and unaware, I had no language for what was happening to my mother in my father’s absence. My childlike brain used to think of it as an expression of love that she couldn't rest or relax without my father’s presence.

Later, during my teenage years, I started noticing more distress in my mother. “Nahi, nahi gate band mat karo, mujhe saans nahi aati.” She would get scared and very uncomfortable in enclosed spaces. She would not allow the gates to be locked completely. She would make sure the windows were always open. We did not know what it was. But, to keep our mother comfortable, we did as she asked.

Growing up in an anti-medicine household

My mother has always been a staunch non-believer in medicine. As children, when we fell sick, she would always tell us, “Rest karo, apne aap thik ho jayega.” Until it reached a point where days had passed without the condition improving, we would not be taken to a doctor. She maintains this even now and is very against taking medications or going to the doctors.

I still don’t know what made her mistrust medication, doctors, and the medical establishment. However, it also makes me see how much she believed in the body’s wisdom to heal itself with time, how much she trusted our own capacities to survive, and how much she made us tolerant of pain.

When leaving made everything louder

In 2022, at the age of 24, when I left home to pursue a PhD in a different state, my mother’s distress grew rapidly and intensely. She found it difficult to fall asleep without talking to me on the phone. She says, “Jee ghabra raha hai.” She started experiencing intense restlessness, breathlessness in crowds and enclosed spaces. From refusing to take elevators to refusing to go to the movies, restaurants not having open seating, and being unable to stay in malls for long. One day, my sister called me to tell me, “Mummy ko bohot problem ho rahi hai. Kal raat me 2 baje doodh mangvaya tha.” The milk in our home had run out, so she started feeling distressed in the middle of the night, and that’s when my sister ordered milk from an instant delivery app. It had become common because later my mother told me over the phone, “Kuch khatam ho jaata hai toh soch soch ke jee ghabraane lagta hai. Doodh khatam ho gaya, ab kal kaise kaam hoga. Chawal khatam ho gaye, toh ab kya hoga.” Another day, my brother texted me, “Aaj mummy ekdum senseless jaisi ho gayi thi. Bohot zyada badh gayi hai yeh problem.” I was far away from home, so I only heard stories of these until I watched it unfold in front of me.

We had gone pandal-hopping during Durga Puja. My mother was with the three of us while my father was a bit ahead in the crowd. It was very crowded, bodies standing against each other, touching, pushing, shouting. And that’s when it happened. My mother started sweating profusely, got breathless, and started panicking. Not knowing what to do, I held her hand and started breaking through the crowd with both my siblings walking ahead of us, trying to make space, shouting, pushing people to give us space and let us out. A few minutes later, we finally emerged from the crowd, and that’s when my mother regained her breath. I saw her doing the same thing, taking those long, deep breaths to soothe herself once she was out of the crowd.

It happened again when we had gone on a family trip to the hills. We were doing a small trek to a waterfall. My mother always keeps a small bottle of water with her. It is something that soothes her. My siblings and I jokingly call it “her emotional support bottle.” She offered her water bottle when a person on the trek asked for it. However, the person sipped it all at once, leaving the bottle empty. And it happened again – her breathless, restless, anxious, panicky. My brother ran ahead to find a bottle of water while my father, my sister, and I sat there, soothing her and trying to calm her down. It did not work until my brother got a bottle of water.

The phone that must stay on

Now we don’t go to the movies together because it is way too distressing for her. Whenever we go to a restaurant, we check online first to ensure the interior isn't enclosed. My mother rarely takes the elevator, and when she does, we make sure at least one of us is physically present with her. We rarely take the metro, and if we do, we make sure to keep her distracted by talking continuously. We always keep candies and mints in our bags to ensure that in a moment of distress, the taste will calm her.

As our mother’s distress started increasing, we ensured that we stayed more connected with her. With both my siblings going to college during the day, they would make sure to call her or send her photographs during the day. I started doing the same, trying to include and involve her more in life through small updates throughout the day. And my father started holding her hand in public, especially in places that distressed her.

Since the day I left home for my doctoral studies, my mother and I have spoken on the phone every night. And before disconnecting the call, she never fails to say, “Phone on rakhna. Jee ghabrayega toh call karungi vaapas.” There have been days when she has called me twice at night, saying, “Jee ghabra raha tha isliye call kiya.”  Sometimes we talk about mostly nothing; our calls are punctuated by many brief silences on both sides, and yet it calms and soothes her. And me.

A daughter-practitioner-researcher’s quest

After my fieldwork in the female ward of a psychiatric hospital, I had met with a therapist who told me, “You don’t have to suffer your mother’s pain to make sense of your work.” It stayed with me. Her distress, her anti-medicine stance, her know-hows of soothing herself – I have carried all these things while doing my own fieldwork for my doctoral project. My therapist-self and my researcher-self kept tugging me in different directions when I witnessed suffering, injustice, and violence in mental health care spaces, but my mother’s daughter-self kept me frozen.

After I finished my fieldwork, I promised myself that no matter how bad things get with our finances or with my mother’s distress, I will never put her in these psychiatric institutions. I don’t want to say that psychiatric institutions are harmful for everyone, but I know that they will be very harmful for her. I have now witnessed women my mother’s age who have spent decades in hospitals and halfway homes. I have seen how their life becomes stagnant, how joy is absent, and how life becomes monotonous.

My mother loves dancing, spending time with her friends, and participating in various religious events. She is a joyful person who laughs easily. Her laughter fills our home. Her distress swells it too. But we learn to co-exist with both these threads, and it keeps us all glued together.

Is my doctoral project for her? Is this archive for her? I don’t know. All I know is that this archive is for everyone who feels like my mother.

We are mad, and we exist with joy.