“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made,” wrote Immanuel Kant in 1784. He was saying that we are made of so many irreconcilable parts that it is impossible to fashion something that makes perfect sense out of it.This is where Urvashi Bahuguna’s collection of essays on mental health gets its aptly chosen title, No Straight Thing Was Ever Made: Essays on Mental Health. Bahuguna is that rarest of writers, imbued with a preternatural talent of navigating the uncharted and often terrifying interiors of our mental maze and returning with clean, precise and harrowing prose that cuts straight to the bone. For the average reader, this can be an edifying experience. For those who are in touch with their shadow side, it is a devastating one.No Straight Thing Was Ever Made: Essays on Mental Health by Urvashi Bahuguna. Photo: Penguin/Amazon.This talent does not, however, come without a price. She is often overwhelmed with anxiety so crippling that it drains the last vestiges of energy within her. “How much time do you spend thinking every day?” enquired her psychiatrist at one of their sessions. “Your mind goes at a hundred miles per hour trying to keep up with all the perceived dangers. Of course, your body is tired. Your sick mind is trying to keep you sad and afraid, while your healthy mind is working overtime to keep you afloat.”The book is comprised of 10 deeply honest essays that examine her experiences with dating, breakups, family, therapists, the writing life, the natural world, the arts and social media. What stand out are the author’s acute insights into the human condition and the luminous clarity she brings to our darkest moments. But the heightened sensitivity that makes her a writer of astonishing talents is also her greatest vulnerability, a malady that afflicts many creative minds.When the author finds herself at the terrifying but familiar place that she calls ‘The Brink’, she wonders if there is any point in carrying on with what often seems like a charade. “It is a dangerous descent in thought, because at that moment I believe that my reasoning makes perfect sense,” she writes. “It is dangerous because, in the midst of that tumult, I believe that the tumult is the sum of my existence. On these terrifying days, I beg God (close to the precipice, Belief arrives) and the body for the respite of sleep so that a little rest may sit between me and the non-stop clamor, between me and the pressing need to reaffirm or disavow a will to continue.”Also read: When a Pandemic Begins, a Mental Health Crisis Threatens to FollowThis book could not be better timed, given that the world is reeling under two pandemics, the virus-induced variety, and one much harder to treat and diagnose, a global pandemic of mental illness. Incidents of domestic and sexual violence, child abuse, depression and suicide have spiked ever since stringent containment measures, including lockdown, were announced around the world. It is getting harder than ever to look away from the mirror or to disassociate from the ugliness reflected therein.Tools for mental well-beingNo Straight Thing illuminates the murkiest areas of our psyche, providing us with powerful tools on how to pull ourselves back from the precipice if we should ever find ourselves teetering on its edge.Modern living comes with its own set of traps that can hobble any attempts at self-healing. One of them is social media. Apart from being a very poor substitute for real-world interactions, the reactionary and often toxic nature of the medium itself can trigger latent or undiagnosed conditions.“I was filling my head (an already overtired, turbulent entity) with information that piqued a certain kind of interest, and it was leaving me feeling increasingly unfulfilled,” cites Bahuguna as reasons for leaving social media. “I could tell that I couldn’t hear my thoughts inside social networking sites anymore, I was paralysed by comparison and self-critique, and by a tiredness of the way people did not appear to be listening to each other. I got angry easily, dismissive even more easily. I did not seem to be listening.”She often deploys what appear to be perfectly chosen quotes from a variety of both famous and lesser-known authors. Like this one by Gregory Howe Colt on the stigma surrounding mental illness: “The barriers our culture erects between “normal” people and “suicidal” people are barriers that I believe we erect from the fear that the difference is so slight.”Also read: World Suicide Prevention Day: A Time to Reflect and Address Mental HealthOr Rumi on emerging from prolonged writer’s block, a situation the author had to face more than once in her career: “Why should we grieve that we have been sleeping? It does not matter how long we have been unconscious. We are groggy, but let the guilt go. Feel the motions of tenderness around you, the buoyancy.”The Buddha had a term for a life thrown out of balance or out of sync with our natural rhythms. He called it Vipallasa, which in Pali can be translated as “derangement” or “perversion”. He was referring to the ways in which we define a “normal” existence. He called it a mass delusion, which means we carry on with our lives thinking we are spiritually and mentally healthy because those around us share our values and misunderstandings. Krishnamurthi echoed the Buddha when he said, “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”All those suffering may seek solace in the words of Rumi who calls on us to forgive our imperfect selves, or Ram Dass who stresses the need for building bridges and for empathy because ultimately “we are all just walking each other home”.But it is important to note that the struggle to restore a semblance of sanity in a turbulent mind cannot be won entirely with philosophical ruminations and words of wisdom, however beautifully articulated and well-meaning they might be. There can be no substitute for qualified and experienced mental health professionals and the right medication, if deemed necessary.While the essays in No Straight Thing Was Ever Made may on the surface appear to be grappling with bleakness and despair, what we are left with at the end of each one is a sense of hope and empowerment. While it may not be possible to fashion something completely straight out of the crooked timber of humanity, the author says “one can love what one does not love all of”.Vikram Zutshi is a cultural critic, author and filmmaker.
