Translated into English from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha, Sanya Rushdi’s Hospital is the story of a woman who is experiencing psychosis for the third time. The protagonist is Rushdi’s namesake, Sanya, a woman in her 30s, living in Australia. Hospital chronicles Sanya’s time in the hospital where she spends time trying to form meaningful relationships with other patients, convinced that the Hospital staff are giving her the wrong treatment and that they are trying to harm her. It details her time at the psychiatric ward, her interactions with the staff and the patients, and her thoughts and arguments.
Sanya’s story also tells us that even if everything in your life seems to be going perfectly, your mental health can still take a fall. Sanya is an intelligent and hardworking student pursuing her PhD when she has her first episode of psychosis that came out of nowhere and gripped her. Life hasn’t been the same since then for Sanya.
Sanya lives in her world of make-believe, seeing secret codes and languages everywhere. She has irrational fears of technology, phones especially, believing that they are being used to spy on people. Sanya might be paranoid but it is indeed true that increased use of technology has resulted in increased surveillance. In such a case, how irrational are Sanya’s fears?
Such writings that detail the inner lives of patients struggling with their mental health have not been attempted from the point of view of a headscarf-wearing Muslim woman living in Australia. Every now and then someone acts with little regard for her religious dietary restrictions and she feels unwelcome among other patients. In Sanya, we find an opinionated and strong, yet unreliable narrator, and the reader learns only about her thoughts and her perspective of how things move in time.
The narrative makes the reader wonder what is real and what isn’t, just as Sanya must also be wondering. There are colours, patterns, and secret codes everywhere. At times, it feels like Sanya’s parents have teamed up with the authorities at the hospital to plot against Sanya and keep her locked up. The boundaries between the “real world” and the psychiatric ward get blurred as the ward becomes the only reality and Sanya starts to form intimate relationships with the other patients. She is empathetic and kind which helps her forge friendships easily within the hospital. However, outside the ward, she doesn’t seem to have many meaningful relationships except with her family members.
Sanya’s story exposes the apathy of psychiatric institutions and the follies of Western medicine. It revives the old debate of the use of allopathic medicine vs counselling and therapy focused on language for mental health patients. Doctors at the hospital believe that nothing apart from medicine can help treat the patients and they force patients to take medicines against their will instead of using methods that combine both therapy and medicines. Sanya, on the other hand believes that only language and counselling can help her. She is in denial about her mental health conditions and she rejects her diagnosis.
The author lays great emphasis on language as therapeutic. She uses diary entries to illustrate the state of her protagonist’s mental health. Arunava Sinha translates beautifully the innermost thoughts and fears of the protagonist.
Sanya feels better when she is interacting with her friends at the hospital. In contrast, her response to injections and medicines is out of control. She breaks down and cries as the staff forces the treatment on her. This is humiliating for Sanya. Rushdi exposes the apathetic practices of medical institutions that disregard the patient’s individuality and unique needs. There is homogenous treatment for every patient, regardless of their individual experiences.
The choice of Rushdi’s protagonist destigmatises psychosis further as the protagonist Sanya is a hardworking and kind person who is able to make sense of most things.
This novel comes at a time when there is a need for a complete overhaul of the existing practices regarding mental health in Indian society. A novel like Hospital can help us make sense of mental illness through the eyes of the patient.
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