Schizophrenia is the inability of a person to distinguish reality from his/her thoughts and dreams.
I dont have any memories whatsoever of talking to her in good health, all i remember is how awesome her 'Moong ki dal' was, and how she could give Tarla Dalal serious competition when it came to cooking Indian food.
Like Khushwant Singh, I cant imagine my grandmother being young or being 'sane', to me she was sick and old her whole life.
The question her death raises in my mind is, can death be a good thing?
Her mental illness called for a series of sacrifices made by my grandfather, who is in perfect physical health and can give serious competition to any IIT'ian in solving algebra.
Also, because of her paranoia, only a certain number of people were allowed in her room, only her immediate family was privileged to witness the warmth and affection inside of her. And the others would often witness her wrath.
That said, even her daughter-in-law and her son-in-law were a victim of the paranoia, and their interaction with her was limited to the initial years of their respective marriages.
Thus, for all these reasons it was hard for my grandfather to remain socially active.
However, the flip side is that she did not even know she was sick.
She was happy with all the imaginary people in her head. Often when she was lying down,, her mind would tell her, shes in some family gathering, and she would laugh and sing, like the 'normal' grandmothers do.
She said, that all the 'dead people' have come back and she would spend the whole day with her dead daughter, just talking to her.
In her head, she was living a good life. A life of dreams, literally.
This happens to be my favorite of all your blogs ! It reflects your strength, courage, maturity and I am proud of the way you handled it . Death does make you feel like the life that you are living with so much animation by the end of it is just an illusion which breaks when destiny decides to dawn upon us . Then life moves on , even though it seems like evrything has come to an end and nothing matters anymore, because we dwell so insensitively and so morbidly in our grief that we look past the trees still growing, the wind still blowing , people still going to work , still traffic on the road , 3 new babies every minuite !! I just hope i have the maturity , knowledge and understanding of this phenomena of our world when i am subjected to death .
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