Aabida Malik

depression-indians

“She has passed into another world,’’ whimpered my mother.

“Who, mom?’’ I quizzed.

“Your friend, my girl, your confidante,’’ she lamented.

“Oh my God!’’ I cried, and the crystals commenced dripping from my eyes.

My memory began to exercise. Oh! Her first beam. Her affable nature. And her lucid mind. The day when I was tardy and a little nothingness was left on neophyte’s bench. Slackenly, our amity robusted. Oh! The way she used to call me for going to school. The way we used to double up canteen and hush-hushes.

But her engineered smirk…..I knew she had croaked internally. I, many-a- times, gave her room to share with me but she was kinda distinguishable girl. She always favoured, remaining mute!

A motherless girl, after all, needed a shore. But alas! I couldn’t be so. As we grew-up, I completed my graduation and we lost empathy with each other. My mother used to go to a milkman where my friend’s aunt often met her. Once, I heard that my friend had failed for successive five years. Her MDD (Major Depressive Disorder) had ruined her splendid life!

My mother told me, “Dear! Your friend is on deathbed!” After a brief pause, she resumed: “She is being tormented dreadfully by her step-mother even in her already atrocious condition.”

Silence followed.

And then, she spoke again. “Her mental torture is being added by physical torture. Her father left backing her and they are not furnishing her food,” she resumed. “Everyone else is engulfed with assiduity but she is facing alone. The most melancholic part is that no one in her society is raising finger in her part.”

“Stop it mom! I can’t hear anymore,’’ I protested.

Next day, I got to her address. When I reached there, I greeted her step-mother. But she gave me a cold response by saying, “Your friend is not here. She has gone to other place.”

I went back to home and shrilled. And then, on other day, my mom wised up saying, “She passed away!”

I hurried my steps to her residence and saw my friend on bed, pale and lifeless! “Oh! Her step-mother lied to me,’’ I howled, howled and howled.

Her appearance had absolutely altered because of torture. She was no more and I couldn’t assist her. I wish, somebody would have alerted me so before….I would have been lap for her….I would not have let her become extinct of slow starvation. I would have regaled her with my hands. I would have solaced her. I would have…but it kills to write ‘would have’.

Now she is no more just because her MDD, her depressing state, went unnoticed. Nobody bothered to check her menace. Just, nobody!

I chew over that why we lag behind in the field of Behavioural Science or Psychology? Couldn’t society help her agony? Why don’t we accept the disorders? Why we call them as “mentally retarded’’ instead of “intellectually challenged”?

Why?

Why after having so many degrees still we don’t become conscious of others mental agonies? Don’t we have a heap of such souls in our valley for obvious reasons? Now, my Round Robin to all is to understand Psychology to facilitate the treatment of those who are suffering from depression, because it is a silent killer!

Those depressed lots need our support. They need somebody to comfort their ailing plight. Their bloodless mental wounds are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds!

Clinical psychologist by profession, Aabida Malik hails from Model town Sopore.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Well…After reading this article I must say we people really need to grow…..In Our society which is getting more n more modernized…Students getting degrees n doctorates in various fields day by day…we are having energized YOUTH ..who every time stand up for their rights n do not tolerate any discrimination or injustice………. Still their happens such an unfortunate incidence……STARVATION a word which is merely used in our kashmir had such an life taking impact on HER….we people known in world for HOSPITALLITY N HOSTING GUESTS is a muderer of a mentally disturbed girl…We surely gonna pay for it..We need to be a lil more morally n socially responsible for those among us whom deserve a lil bit more care n understanding…they could be either of us…We must take stand on their side…just coz thus world is not for those only who r medically stable…but of those also who r a bit challenged with their stability………….OMG …this thing really makes me cry :'(

  2. Im grieved, churned at core…… im mum…speechless, It is the irony of fate that we fall prey to inhuman n unethical predators.The way u hv crafted the agony of the poor girl depicts your humane instinct n concern for deprived souls.May Allah rest her soul in peace…Aameen

  3. Im grieved…….churned at core. I feel very very sorry for the poor girl and the way she met her end. We have human predators in our society..who are so self centered and beastly that we even write off our own fetus before they sprout into fragrant roses. Girls especially without their mothers fall prey to inhumane and cruel hands. senseless mind sets make things even more worse. I appreciate your concern for such incidents and humane behaviour. You have expressed your emotions very precisely and illustrated with perfect knack , but i would hv been more appropriating if the vocabulary would have been more simple in your write up.

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