Shaheen Bhatt - Ive Never Been (Un) Happier

T here is an end and there is an ending to that end, and I was face-to-face with that end. My friend, philosopher, guide, U.G. Krishnamoorthy, who was the lodestar that had seen me through many a dark night, had opted to die without seeking any kind of medical intervention. At his behest, albeit unwillingly, I had left him in Italy, in the quaint town of Vallecrosia, in the company of an American friend, and made my way back home, without any idea whether I would ever see him alive again.

It was the darkest hour of my life, but for some strange reason, my friend, in his hours of death, had left me with a heightened taste for life.

Your life is finished, Daddy, said my twenty-year-old daughter, Shaheen, as she gazed at me, thoughtfully with those grown-up eyes of hers. I had just arrived back home, and it was well past midnight.

People want to live for a long time, just so that they may experience even a fraction of what you are living through right now. You have already reached the summit. Where will you go from here? This is what mystics have spoken about at length when they journey through the dark night of the soul, she said, as I read out to her from those scraps of paper on which I had scribbled my heightened emotions.

Having unburdened myself of what I had lived through to my little girl gave me a few moments of respite, but it also made me feel worried for her. She had listened to me with every pore of her young being. Thats when I got the feeling that there was a kind of desolate vastness within her that was able to contain the depths of such emotion. And I was reminded of what Nietzsche had said... that he was more afraid of being understood than misunderstood. Because if he was misunderstood, only his intellectual vanity would be hurt. But if he was understood, he would feel even worse, because that meant that the person who understood him would have had to have suffered enough in order to have understood what he was saying in the first place.

And as dawn broke, I sensed for the first time that my little girl had suffered intensely. But I only knew how much when I read her book all those years later.

When a grain of sand gets into the craw of an oyster it causes it great pain. So, in order to escape from that pain, the oyster covers the grain of sand with a substance that turns the grain into a pearl. Nowhere does the oyster intend to create a precious jewel.

This is what struck me when I read the rough manuscript of Shaheens book which she had mailed me. Shaheen, in order to escape from the darkness which she had perhaps genetically inherited from me, had dared to embrace that darkness like I had done to stay functionally sane. I realized as I sat there riveted while reading it, that, for her, writing this book was an act towards sheer survival.

When a sandalwood tree burns in a forest fire, it releases a perfume that turns the whole fire into a fragrant blaze. The pain that Shaheen used as fuel to write her book has released her fragrant core. Not only to me as a parent, but to thousands of people out there who are shadowed by this biochemical disorder called depression.

When I was an insomniac teenager I would often slip out in the middle of the night and go to a dargah or to buy a cigarette, and somehow get through the long night. One night I encountered a Sufi fakir, who said something to me which will shadow me till I die. He said... if you seek blessings from the lord above then ask him to shower you with pain. Because pain wakes you up... Ya Allah takleef de... dard jagaata hai...

I asked him, what kind of an absurd prayer is this? Who on earth would ask God for pain? He peered into my eyes and said smilingly, It is pain that keeps you awake my boy... otherwise you would be sleeping soundly in that high-rise building in some air-conditioned room... and where the hell would that get you?

Where would we be without our pain, Shaheen?

Human suffering, after all, is the wound from where great religious movements, political movements and artistic movements have bloomed. My pain is the bedrock on which I have built the edifice of Mahesh Bhatt the filmmaker. Your pain has helped you produce this remarkable book, which will be a coping device for those millions out there who suffer in silence.

My child, you are the firefly that illuminates the darkness in the jungle by burning its own fuel, and as it does so, it lights up the way for the lost traveller.

9 March 2019

Mahesh Bhatt

Mumbai

Preface

A t thirty-one, Ive lived with depression for all of my adult life. In fact, Ive lived with depression for longer than I havent.

Somehow, against all odds, Im in constant anguish. Now, Im not talking about the Netflix-cancelled-my-favourite-show-and-I-keep-dropping-chicken-curry-on-my-favourite-pair-of-jeans-so-my-life-sucks sort of anguish. Im talking about the theres-a-deep-unexplained-sadness-in-me-thats-eating-away-at-my-hopes-and-dreams-and-skin-quality-and-making-me-want-to-literally-jump-out-of-this-window sort of anguish.

Situationally speaking, Ive never been subjected to or lived through anything truly horrific; nothing that is unique to just me, at any rate. The lifestyle I enjoy is not one I worked my way up to through hard labour, and a lot, (if not most) of the opportunity afforded to me comes from groundwork that was painstakingly laid by my parents. Along with the financial security my circumstances afford me, they also grant me the means to make demands for and exercise my rights to freedom and equality, which a lot of people in India, and the world over, cant do. In short, I possess all the qualifications of what they call a lucky one. So Im aware I am free in ways a lot of people arent.