The Harsh Beauty of Pain

Many people have asked me why I decided to curate an issue on mental health. I think the answer lies in the memory. An old, painful one, but I wanted to be free to confront it on the page and to write a letter to my dead grandfather, who once was a caregiver to his youngest son, who suffered with schizophrenia. My Uncle was a brilliant doctor and a gentle person. He wasn't perfect, but he was family.

- Chinki Sinha IS EDITOR, OUTLOOK MAGAZINE

"Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night,"

—From Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, which you read out to me often and now, I know why.

Dear Nana,

It is your birthday on August 15.

It is also India's Independence Day.

On August 15, 1988, you wrote in your diary, "my birthdate and verily, the birthdate of a free India." You would have been 116 years old this Independence Day.

I know you are free at last. Of guilt and shame, of the sad fate of an old man who worried about the future of his son; of the burden of care which grew heavier by the day for your frail frame.

You were the first person I wrote a letter to. You told my mother, your daughter, when I stole books from your library, that she shouldn't punish me for stealing books.

Your granddaughter, the book thief, also stole three of your diaries. I know you were sad and beaten, that on winter nights, you felt despair. You didn't know how to reconcile with the fact your youngest son, a doctor, had become "mad" and how to carry on. You had your pension but it wasn't a lot of money. Not in your circumstances.

I was there under the bed hiding when your son had that manic episode that changed everything. Nobody recovered from it. Not him. Not you. Not the others. It was almost 30 years ago.