Just the elation of madness, please

Shreevatsa Nevatia is an unusual storyteller — the kind who can dissect his own bipolar disorder and invite the reader to a grand theatre where his mania is laid out threadbare for everyone to watch scene by scene.

In this email interview to BLink he speaks about his book How to Travel Light, how a psychotic subject became a reliable narrator, the elation of madness and the cries of help that go unheard today.

You open your book with the statement: A psychotic subject is first an unreliable narrator. Every experience is grist for the mill for writers. At the back of your head, even in the throes of your mania, it appears the journalist in you had the record mode on to be able to retell it with alacrity. What went behind you becoming the reliable narrator?

An experience that typically begins with elation, mania sometimes becomes hard to forget. Suddenly altered, the mind discovers a facility that is enabling and also enthralling. The trouble is that it invents as much as it reveals. It is seductive to think that you are the centre of the world, but that conviction is also a lie. This is the reason why I call the psychotic subject an unreliable narrator. I want to remember my high, that feeling of being on the top of things, because I am greedy, not because I am rigorous. Post-manic depression is crippling in part because it makes me revisit everything I had said and done, and in the end, it is guilt that makes me want to form a reliable narrative. My grand plans of becoming a monarch never quite materialise, but that excess has some very real-world consequences. I can be expansive, but I can also be brutal. It is the consequence of that brutality that makes me want to walk the line. Mania certainly leaves you with good stories, but it takes hard-won lucidity to tell them again.

At some point you mention, “I didn’t want the madness of a manic breakdown. I just wanted to borrow some of its elation”. Did you ever rebel against finding a ‘cure’ because you felt that a life without madness would deprive you of elation?

Mania and depression don’t leave you with very many choices. In effect, both states leave you catatonic. Life and therapy, thankfully, afford you a third option of functional clarity. For the longest time, I would be nostalgic for the abandon of mania. Its euphoria had opened up the scriptures for me. It had taught me to love numbers, and for a bit, also taught me to love everyone I saw. Debilitation, the other end of the spectrum, made me hate myself. This cycle, I found, was hard to break. I was nostalgic for that elation, but it is only a decade of therapy that made me realise how incoherent my ravings were. Madness was something I suffered. It wasn’t a magic wand that suddenly helped me create. I wouldn’t give up my bipolarity for any riches, but I surely would never want to be manic again.

Bipolarity, your doctors say, isn’t a disease that can be cured, but a condition one learns to live with. How do you reign in your manic mind today?

The answer to this question can be terribly prosaic. I take my lithium twice a day. I try and get at least seven hours of sleep, and I stay away from drugs. But this, I feel, doesn’t tell the whole story. I continue to read. I keep trying to make sense of the world and not be overwhelmed by its chaos. Once every month, I meet my psychiatrist and my therapist. They listen to my concerns, and they address each of them, never dismissing them as banal or unimportant. My support system has never stopped indulging me. If my reason slips, I know I have their alertness to rely on. The trampoline of their affection has always helped me bounce back. I don’t want to alienate them again, and it’s this desire that reins me in.

On February 28, 2010, you took to Facebook 56 times. Each year Facebook throws up anniversaries of your most manic posts. Social media seems to be a toxic drug for the mentally ill. What do you make of recent episodes such as the Blue Whale challenge or of students streaming their suicide live on social media as a perverse audience eggs them on? Where does the cure lie?

Each time I have gone manic, I have taken to Facebook. Initially, it helps my madness find an audience. People respond to your half-funny, half-inspired posts, and it is in that hint of dialogue that you find a felicity of sorts. Social media reminds you that there are others who might want to play too. For me, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter might have been a drug, but they weren’t entirely toxic. They helped give my disturbed mind a megaphone. Few were entertained perhaps, but many more were alerted. My friends would read my posts and know that I needed help. They all acted with alacrity. The Blue Whale challenge is nothing but a cry for help. Empathy is not a given in the world we live in. Because mental health remains a taboo even in our most erudite circles, I’m not surprised by these perverse responses. If every man is a haunted house, it is time we all understood our collective horror.

The most poignant line in your book is when you claim you have found realisation and your therapist tells you, “You must know that if this awareness you claim is true, it will survive”. Has your illness made you disbelieve in the spiritual? Has some magical awareness managed to survive through it all?

I was a believer when growing up, but liberal education made me question the severities of my faith. I recognised myself as an atheist until I went manic. Since mania is invariably mystical, I thought I was Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods. I now find myself relying less on those myths. I see myself as an agnostic. Though I might not believe in the presence of an omnipresent god, I feel I can enjoy Shakespeare. I know there’re more things on heaven and earth than can be dreamt of in my philosophy.

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