ferris wheel
He was 1 foot something. He had a cute grey face with a winking eye and a jolly grin. He wore a bright red cape with a ribbon. He sat with his tiny legs folded. He was Vijay Mathur.
After two years Vijay is barely half foot tall, is nothing but two undefined blocks of dirt coloured clay stuck together by umpteen layers of feviquik. In fact what used to be his head is now only a squashed little lump. People have asked what this is: a shaving brush minus bristles? A shivalingam? A thereupetic device? The fact is he is Vijay-still Vijay. An important presence.
Vijay is one of the oddities that piggyback my life as the mother of a ‘different’ 26 year old son; Vijay has been his pillow mate, his puppet, his talisman, his companion in fear and anxiety. The more deformed he gets, the more he seems to get empowered. Vijay is thrown out of the bed when nightmares seize my son, Vijay is put away hastily into the shirt pocket when he falls down for fear that he will break. My son values Vijay just as much when he is beheaded and in two pieces or alternatively when my son was/is in several pieces himself.
In several pieces, yes… I have tried to say it in different ways: intellectual disability, mental handicap, developmental disability, emotionally disturbed, gone into a shell...and more recently panic gripped… While it brings me an immediate respectful “oh! I ‘m sorry” it has not brought me an inch closer to closeness to anyone. The most enduring hallucinatory image is that of my riding atop a huge ferris wheel… just as I look forward to a breath taking descent, the wheel stops…I am suspended on the top not knowing how I will come down…that’s how stuck I feel in life at times.
And for those who venture to ask a question or more… the story is just getting snakier by the day.
I was walking with my son to the sea front one july dusk last year; I sensed a different touch, an insistent tug which soon turned into violent pulls… heading into another realm of existence altogether…I could not understand or imagine what had suddenly gripped him…my only concern was to reach home- oh yes, right across the rushing traffic’s headlight I was pulled by his unknown panic and vice like grip…we did reach home in one piece against all odds but life took a definite twist after this nightmarish event.
In the ensuing months of paranoia, a free thinking, fairly independent young man suddenly became rooted to his bed; smelled ‘railway’ after 15days without a bath, grew hair like a caveman, stopped eating, shut his mind to everything except music and fear…and Vijay.
Hey! But life is not all that bleak , is it? It is only when one hits rock bottom that going lower becomes a distinct non possibility. Like learning that the proximity of a 15 day unbathed person doesn’t necessarily asphyxiate you…that hunger is a powerful motivator, fear a mighty detractor…but together they still do not defy the life force…that a caveman’s hairdo is fanciful in its own way. Why not live a low phase in life as fully as a high one? The Osho says “ the only problem with sadness, despair, anger, hopelessness, anxiety, anguish and misery is that you want to get rid of them. That’s the only barrier. They are challenges of life. Accept them.” Amidst anxious phone calls from my parents, spotting the funny and the remotely hopeful in the despairing was perhaps the only saving grace of those dark 5 months.
My son did come out of the panic prison, very slowly, guided by psychotherapy and his own positive instincts, perhaps bewildered motherhood and powerful prayers of grandparents. It was interesting to watch him begin to eat again, with a refugeelike eagerness, take baby steps again…it was a thrill when he came to the dining table after weeks…one hand firmly gripping my shoulder. I have known that solid grip of insecurity since then, when we are at home, when we go out. He always wants to be sure I am near him. It took him weeks to want to come out; the lift would made him paranoid and he would go right back. Taking him out became an exercice in strategies. The first haircut was an unparalleled event –it took two of us to escort him like a handcuffed convict along the road. Never had the hairdresser seen so much grime and dust in so much hair!
And while the psychiatrist termed it an ‘episode’ with possibilities of reoccurrence in geometrical progression of frequency and intensity, and the psychotherapist said my son was caught in depths of insecurity and in webs of an identity crisis, I would like to believe that it was but a one time aberration of the mind and terror of the heart and that… I have gotten off the ferris wheel …..this time.
.
There goes my son searching frantically for a chip from an accidentally knocked down Vijay…he pockets it with visible relief. Vijay, freshly mutilated, is thriving in the adulation and faith of a pure mind. Was he the straw of a child drowning in mental chaos? Was he the affirmation of his faith in life? It makes me wonder about the need we all have for such anchors in life. Be it the renowned Siddhi Vinayak or the wayside under-the-tree vermillion smeared god, are they any different from Vijay? Aren’t faith and value idolized relatively to our needs? With a gentle touch of gratitude I take the pieces of clay given by my son for safekeeping.
After two years Vijay is barely half foot tall, is nothing but two undefined blocks of dirt coloured clay stuck together by umpteen layers of feviquik. In fact what used to be his head is now only a squashed little lump. People have asked what this is: a shaving brush minus bristles? A shivalingam? A thereupetic device? The fact is he is Vijay-still Vijay. An important presence.
Vijay is one of the oddities that piggyback my life as the mother of a ‘different’ 26 year old son; Vijay has been his pillow mate, his puppet, his talisman, his companion in fear and anxiety. The more deformed he gets, the more he seems to get empowered. Vijay is thrown out of the bed when nightmares seize my son, Vijay is put away hastily into the shirt pocket when he falls down for fear that he will break. My son values Vijay just as much when he is beheaded and in two pieces or alternatively when my son was/is in several pieces himself.
In several pieces, yes… I have tried to say it in different ways: intellectual disability, mental handicap, developmental disability, emotionally disturbed, gone into a shell...and more recently panic gripped… While it brings me an immediate respectful “oh! I ‘m sorry” it has not brought me an inch closer to closeness to anyone. The most enduring hallucinatory image is that of my riding atop a huge ferris wheel… just as I look forward to a breath taking descent, the wheel stops…I am suspended on the top not knowing how I will come down…that’s how stuck I feel in life at times.
And for those who venture to ask a question or more… the story is just getting snakier by the day.
I was walking with my son to the sea front one july dusk last year; I sensed a different touch, an insistent tug which soon turned into violent pulls… heading into another realm of existence altogether…I could not understand or imagine what had suddenly gripped him…my only concern was to reach home- oh yes, right across the rushing traffic’s headlight I was pulled by his unknown panic and vice like grip…we did reach home in one piece against all odds but life took a definite twist after this nightmarish event.
In the ensuing months of paranoia, a free thinking, fairly independent young man suddenly became rooted to his bed; smelled ‘railway’ after 15days without a bath, grew hair like a caveman, stopped eating, shut his mind to everything except music and fear…and Vijay.
Hey! But life is not all that bleak , is it? It is only when one hits rock bottom that going lower becomes a distinct non possibility. Like learning that the proximity of a 15 day unbathed person doesn’t necessarily asphyxiate you…that hunger is a powerful motivator, fear a mighty detractor…but together they still do not defy the life force…that a caveman’s hairdo is fanciful in its own way. Why not live a low phase in life as fully as a high one? The Osho says “ the only problem with sadness, despair, anger, hopelessness, anxiety, anguish and misery is that you want to get rid of them. That’s the only barrier. They are challenges of life. Accept them.” Amidst anxious phone calls from my parents, spotting the funny and the remotely hopeful in the despairing was perhaps the only saving grace of those dark 5 months.
My son did come out of the panic prison, very slowly, guided by psychotherapy and his own positive instincts, perhaps bewildered motherhood and powerful prayers of grandparents. It was interesting to watch him begin to eat again, with a refugeelike eagerness, take baby steps again…it was a thrill when he came to the dining table after weeks…one hand firmly gripping my shoulder. I have known that solid grip of insecurity since then, when we are at home, when we go out. He always wants to be sure I am near him. It took him weeks to want to come out; the lift would made him paranoid and he would go right back. Taking him out became an exercice in strategies. The first haircut was an unparalleled event –it took two of us to escort him like a handcuffed convict along the road. Never had the hairdresser seen so much grime and dust in so much hair!
And while the psychiatrist termed it an ‘episode’ with possibilities of reoccurrence in geometrical progression of frequency and intensity, and the psychotherapist said my son was caught in depths of insecurity and in webs of an identity crisis, I would like to believe that it was but a one time aberration of the mind and terror of the heart and that… I have gotten off the ferris wheel …..this time.
.
There goes my son searching frantically for a chip from an accidentally knocked down Vijay…he pockets it with visible relief. Vijay, freshly mutilated, is thriving in the adulation and faith of a pure mind. Was he the straw of a child drowning in mental chaos? Was he the affirmation of his faith in life? It makes me wonder about the need we all have for such anchors in life. Be it the renowned Siddhi Vinayak or the wayside under-the-tree vermillion smeared god, are they any different from Vijay? Aren’t faith and value idolized relatively to our needs? With a gentle touch of gratitude I take the pieces of clay given by my son for safekeeping.
posted by meera @ 9:42 PM
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