It was a late Sunday afternoon. I was 8 years old, and was sleeping with my mom, when suddenly I felt a little hand nudging at me. I woke up to find it was my brother with a cricket bat and ball in his hand. It was my cousin with a smile and a twinkle in his eyes. It was time for cricket with our uncle and me.
Let me discuss something, before I get back to my story.
Mental illness is not always genetic or by birth. What I am trying to explain here is that it can also be brought about by other factors. To my surprise, I found that many people do not know about this. A simple web search will also reveal this. There can be many reasons for a mental illness to occur.
Injury or accidents leading to defects in certain areas of the brain have been linked to mental illness.
There is also prenatal damage. It means that if there is a disruption to early development of fetus brought about by any accident, abuse to the mother or alcohol or substance or smoking abuse, it causes lack of oxygen. And this oxygen is necessary for early fetal brain development.
Poor nutrition or exposure to toxins in early childhood days has also been known as one of the causes of mental illness.
But that is not it. It is known that death, divorce, dysfunctional family life, frequent change of schools, physical or sexual abuse and social or cultural expectations have also been known as the cause of mental illness.
What is even more painful is that I have watched this first hand. I do not know whether I could have done something about this or whether I was too young to have done something. I leave it to the readers to decide.
I was brought up in a joint family with my dad and his brothers all living together. My dad was the eldest with two brothers. Naturally, I was the eldest. Things changed when one of my uncles married and had a kid. My youngest uncle called him Pablo (our entire family are huge football fans). He was really bright for his age and I would not like it when people would pay him more attention than me. Even though Pablo would try and play with me, I would shut the door or run away and leave him alone. What I realized later on was that things were not at all good for him.
We are from a middle-class family so our parents would leave for work for the entire day, and our grandparents would be too old to run after us. Our moms would keep nannies, but it wasn’t the best of decisions for Pablo. One day, to her horror, my mom discovered that Pablo’s nanny would actually starve him and have his lunch. She would threaten him that if he will tell his parents, then he will get a beating from her. Needless to say that was her last day at our house. Pablo was also born left handed. But from an early age his parents forced him to write with the other hand as they considered it unnatural. Pablo was also very sick most of the time. But instead of being taken to the doctors he would fall prey to home remedies and a bombardment of un-prescribed drugs.
Now, I do not know how (and neither did uncle or aunt tell us), Pablo’s attitude began to take a turn towards the worst when he was about 6 years old. Most of the time he would talk to himself. Jump around by himself, clapping his hands. Get frequent violent mood swings, violent enough to hit back to his mother and father. He began failing in school, and his parents instead of taking him for some help to the doctors, continuously scolded him. My parents and uncle would try and make them understand, but by the time they did it was already too late.
What really saddens me is that during all these times Pablo looked up to me. During his violent mood swings it would be mostly me who could control him or would be me who he would listen to. I spent most of my later school days spending all my evenings playing with him and everyday he would wait for the clock to strike 4 so that he could play cricket with his favorite brother.
Not all things are messed up. He actually has a spark. He has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge or for anything that he likes. He is actually quite brilliant at sports knowledge, and loves geography. He and I have won countless quiz competitions. He follows football earnestly. He knows all the players in the Barclays Premier League who have played in the last fifteen years, along with all the managers that have held the realm. He loves to study about countries, its people and its culture.
We as a family and society have a huge impact on our kids without us even knowing about it. The days when kids would listen to fairy tales from our grand moms are gone. Now they are more interested in mobile phones, games and TV. I am not telling that kids shouldn’t be exposed to this. But we should be careful about it. We should know that kids are sponges and whatever little things we do rubs of greatly on them. Parents should take time out and spend more time with their kids and learn more about what is going on with their lives. Be more a friend, teacher and guide than a strict, disciplined parent all the time.
Pablo is doing actually very good now, and is now in his second year in Political Science in college. He spends his time watching football or voraciously going through sports news and stories over the internet. At the end of everything, he is indeed happy now.
Note: Image is used only for representational purpose.
This post is a part of our #SaveTheKids Campaign. To check out more posts from this campaign, click here.
