The Reverie

He stared at the mountains from the solitude of the forest. He had found the perfect spot at the edge of the woods, peering over the precipice into the faintly glistening river in the distance that meandered merrily, blissfully oblivious of his presence. From the vantage point, at this distance, the river looked serene. It was anything but. It was ferocious in fact, its roar diluted to a ceaseless whisper where he was.

Was it all real? The snow-cap, the forest beneath, the river further down. It looked like a postcard. He’d seen it too often on screens and on papers and never in real life. The reality had to sink in. It wasn’t a prop, it wasn’t fiction. They existed. The mountain he beheld in the distance was as real as the one he was perched on. It was not the imagination of a mortal.

The silence was eerie. The flow of the river was no longer a noise, it was a constant background over which all was still. Every step he walked would take him a step further from civilisation, a step closer to the peak. He would see for himself if the peak looked like the one across the river. He hoped it did. He vaguely feared that it would all evaporate. Maybe it would. Maybe he would wake up.

The cold that so effectively teamed up with fatigue to bite into his calves was all too real. It had been a hard climb so far but the hardest part had been done. He decided he could rest a few minutes longer. He could enjoy the beauty.

But would it be beautiful if he were here everyday? Was it absolute beauty or only a relative beauty perceived by the nature starved city dwellers on their overdose of concrete and tar and humanity? Relative or absolute, beauty still felt the same, so why did he bother wondering? What is beauty? He wondered why he wondered what it was rather than enjoying whatever it was.

Ugly, that’s what it was. A pile of land folded upward irregularly with rocks and boulders precariously holding on, sometimes letting go and tumbling down. It was not in good repair, no real paths across the terrain, the greenery was erratic and wild, not groomed in ages. The cold alone could make one despair. No sign of other living beings here, no comforts.

That was the hypocrisy. At home, comfort is a good word. It’s a well made bed and a soft blanket. Up here, on walks and vacations in places of natural beauty all the overnight outdoor enthusiasts spit out the word in derision - comfort! Ruined us. Look at the lifestyle problems we all face. Get Pune out of our lungs. Breathe-in the air of heaven. We live for nature. Reconnect with our roots. Pah!

They wouldn’t last a day in nature. They wouldn’t last a day without comfort. We wouldn’t. Nature is living and dying by the sword. We’re evolved to survive somehow to age 40, procreate and get on with it. Instead we dangle limply from canes and walking sticks, wired to machines to die on our beds long after we’ve become walking corpses, useful for no function.

Nature would give us disease and cold and fatigue and wounds. Not to mention predators. What we live for is comfort. What we live because of, is comfort. More civilisation and less nature. Let’s not kid ourselves.

He looked up from his reverie and reminded himself of where he was. The sun was still high up in the sky, the river still glistened and the mountain stood motionless and grand as ever. He was transfixed and mesmerised again by the beauty of it. It was still there. It was probably real. It was certainly beautiful.

He reached the very top. And there he felt elated and exhilarated. It was worth it despite it all. It was good to be in nature. Good to get Pune out of his lungs. Nature wasn’t a killer, nature was beauty. We live for beauty, for never do we live in it. We find it where we seek it. 

It Went Dark

Disclaimer : The following is purely fictional. No part of it should taken as fact or as a reflection of how any aspect of a profession works. 

It was exactly 3 pm on a Friday afternoon when he walked into her office. She was a little more unprepared than she ought to have been given that it was indeed a 3 o clock appointment. She liked the clients who took an extra couple of minutes to walk in, usually awkwardly. She mostly used those precious few minutes to unwind between appointments. It was like sleep, somehow the hours of sleep you're slated for are infinitely less sweet than the few minutes extra you grab after your alarm rings.

So when he staggered in exactly on time, she hurriedly stashed away the magazine she was reading, turned the pages of her clipboard and very deliberately looked up and smiled at him, gesturing him to sit down. 

It was kind of a ritual, a different one with each patient. Some of them walked in and almost ran down into their seats and slumped. Some waited politely, others awkwardly. There was always a lot of awkwardness and he was of the latter type. 

While she smiled and asked him to sit down, she studied several things - his expression, his eyes, his posture, limbs. Sometimes her mind did it automatically, sometimes she had to force herself. This being a Friday afternoon, and a hot summer afternoon to boot, she had to labour to note his facial expression. She tensed immediately and braced for a hard session - something big was coming. Progress hadn't been made. Some major event, maybe trauma. 

"Soooo, been writing in your diary this week?", she asked him as an ice-breaker. He murmured something about busy and by the next moment, he was in his usual rip-roaring form. Spittle flowed down his chin as he bawled about difficulties and emotional upheavals of the preceding week.

She behaved as a textbook therapist should, dispassionately and patiently looking on, chipping in with the appropriate phrases, words and interjections at the pauses. A full ten minutes later when his monologue faded away into stifled sobs of gradually decreasing intensity, she gently nudged the tissue box towards him and began to speak. She asked probing questions that would enable her to assimilate more information about exactly what went wrong while he answered in gasps. She asked him to take his time, drink some water and settle down before speaking.

Her mind though was less lenient. "What a big baby! What a cowardly man! Can't pull himself together for a week and clear his mind. A few steps was all I asked him to follow and instead he comes here and weeps about a fresh load of problems residing solely in his head!" She'd seen patients with far more serious problems make conscious efforts to aid in the therapy but instead she had to spend time with this man. Well, they pay the same every hour, she smirked before instantly inwardly condemning the thought.

"Well, I'll see you next week," she smiled at him as he made his way out at the end of the session with familiar promises of introspecting rather than reacting to certain situations and maintaining his diary. She hid her contempt well and placed a mental bet with herself on the updating of the diary.

She settled down. Was she a bad psychotherapist for having such deprecating thoughts about her patients? She was human after all. All the learnt knowledge about childhood scars and behavioural theory could not eradicate the instinctive answer to why someone was the way they are. They're weaklings. No will power. And even though she knew it wasn't so, she couldn't help thinking so. Who knew where the line was drawn? Not psychologists, for sure.

She sipped some water and settled down in a chair with a magazine without really reading it. She was thinking about how the session had gone. Maybe the marathon-sob would help him, but it was a purely professional concern she felt. There would be no tearful goodbyes when this patient's therapy ended someday in the future. He was something of a mercenary she felt. His attitude was often akin to "I've paid you, now make my sadness go away" or sometimes more insultingly "I've paid you so shut up and listen to me whine and bitch. Don't interrupt." Therapy worked for the patient types, the respectful types who actually bothered to give your words some weight, not those who thought they had everything figured out. Therapy was never going to work on anyone who used the words "new fanged" to describe any aspect of it. Sometimes, blindly believing someone and toeing their line helped a lot.

She often knew the gone cases within the first ten minutes of the first session itself. Ethically, she had to stick with them until she believed they were truly rehabilitated and capable of handling themselves unless the patient himself/herself decided to discontinue.

The problem is, she thought to herself, most people that walk in here are so certain that their problems are the least trivial, the likes of which no one else has seen before. It was easy to be abstract when it concerned others. Great pearls of wisdom such as "Life is fleeting" or "This too shall pass" can easily be meted out to others but when the suffering is yours, it's suddenly earth-shattering. She understood this full well yet found it hard to not be contemptuous of some of her patients who waltzed in and told her about the weight of the world on their shoulders.

Her thoughts thus immersed her until her next patient walked in. She was almost startled when he did. Off late, she had been thinking too much between sessions. Her own sessions with her therapist weren't going too well. She'd been ranting  and fussing about her patients far too much and didn't know what was the cause. She'd lost either patience or spirit. Maybe a bit of both.

Her last patient for the week was neat and trim as always. "He always appears in HD" was the standing joke about him while she gossiped about patients with her therapist friends. She never gave away names or personal details though - professionalism was key. And she was in therapy too, she knew how vulnerable it felt to confide in a stranger your deepest feelings. She couldn't imagine her therapist speaking about her to anyone else.

Mr. HD wished her a good evening and took a seat after she pointed to the chair. There was no flamboyance about him. She didn't mind him. Her feelings for him could be described as a mild fondness, if there was such a thing. He was the earnest type. Not the brightest, did everything asked of him with a degree of meticulousness, sweet and reverent. He would probably be some time in therapy with his degree of trauma but with his steady work, it would happen without any major relapses, she was sure.

Near the end of the session she allowed herself a private smile - the week was done. She could now spend the weekend at home with her husband and maybe her daughter would come over. The clipboard that her husband used as evidence of her lack of tech-savvyness to repeatedly tease her would be put away for two days. She would study it a bit on Monday morning but that was that. She was hoping that there would be no distress calls of the kind that had occupied so many of her weekends in the past.

Mr. HD showed himself out and she collapsed on her chair as one as soon as the door had been shut. As was her norm off-late, she grabbed a nearby magazine and went into stupor. She was thinking about her favourite patient, wondering how she had done this week.

She was a really sweet thing, driven to mental and emotional troubles by her family mainly. It was to her the classic case of how small things add up to really big difficulties - she could not pin-point a single great trauma or event this patient had undergone but everyday that she sat down with her, she understood with new depth how the universe had conspired against this pleasant woman and given her a life of hell.

Something was playing on her mind as she turned the page of the magazine. Even when she wasn't reading, out of habit her eyes glanced over the page from top to bottom and her arms turned the page. She wouldn't be able to recall a single word later.

The previous weekend, she'd had one of her regular dinners with her therapist pals where they were often scornful of patients while somehow maintaining their confidentiality. On some nights when they were a tad generous with the drinks, their patients' confidentiality really hung by a thread. At this dinner, a friend was theorising how a patient would react to overhearing their conversation. He asserted that while being shocked at the tone in which they spoke of their patients, when the discussions went to individual patients in not very flattering terms, no patient would ever think they are the subject of the discussion -
"No patient would think they are the wuss we are discussing. For them, they are at the centre of the great warrior stories of their lives, the great champions, living legends. Take Shobha's favourite patient - the one she cares about so much. Do you think she ever considers herself the coward? Nah, she thinks she's bravely fighting her mind when she's actually a feeble minded creature. No rendition of terminology from the glossary of psychology can change the fact that she's just a weakling, nothing more special. No erosion of reward cycle bullshit."

Shobha was taken aback by this brusque and scathing assesment of her patient and wouldn't accept it. There was a small ensuing argument where he even attacked Shobha. "You're just like your patients, so emotional. Be rational and keep a distance. It's the difference between us and them - we know how our mind works. They don't. Don't let this knowledge be clouded by your attachment for this patient. But oh wait, you're seeing a therapist too. No wonder." He was gloating and goading her.

"Rational!" she muttered with grit teeth. If he was so rational, he wouldn't be using words such as 'weak' and 'wuss' and would see it for what it indeed was - systematic downing of the reward system over a lifetime of steady and covert, often unintentional, undermining. She'd spoken to her patient at length, she knew it best. She resented his statements and had stormed out and they hadn't spoken since. His apology would probably involve the words 'regret' and 'alcohol' and 'heat of the moment' but she was not going to have it. What had been said couldn't be unsaid.

She snapped out of her trance, stuffed her magazines, books and other personal effects where they belonged and rode her gaadi home. She'd see next week.

When Shobha's favourite patient walked in the next week, Shobha looked up almost immediately. Speaking to her felt better than speaking to her own therapist. But something was off today. She started weeping almost as soon as she walked in. It was Shobha's greatest struggle to remain stoic and merely push the napkin holder in her direction. She wanted to hug her and wipe her tears and comfort her.

The troubling sign was that this emotional attachment was not one way - her patient was clearly verging on dependence on Shobha - dependence on the therapist was one of the first things they were told about as students. And even though she could see it, her own personal affection to her patient was crippling her, stopping her from nipping the dependence in the bud. It was now too late perhaps. She might be forced to (ethically) refer her to another psychotherapist. The term was interminable therapy where the therapist can't foresee a successive conclusion of the therapy the way it was going and hence opts for a change, sometimes in method, mostly in therapist.

Her friend's words played in her mind just then. Was her patient really just a wuss? Was it Shobha's own emotional attachment that stopped her from seeing this the way she saw it in other patients? It was hurtful to hear him speak that way about her patient but on the flip-side, it should never be hurtful to hear something about a patient - you must be detached.  She could see clearly how unhealthy the relationship was. Maybe it was holding back the positive effects of therapy. Maybe her patient still not being rehabilitated was her fault. Was she a bad therapist? Self-doubt gnawed at her all of a sudden.

That's the thing about self-doubt, you can build the strongest wall to stop it yet the wall needs to be fortified constantly. And should a sliver of it come through, all the self-doubt you've ever kept out will suddenly enter too. She knew this, but she was powerless to stop it.

Many people couldn't believe therapists needed therapists. But you know how the brain works, don't you? You know how emotions work, the stuff with serotonin and dopamine and other neuro-whatsit stuff? Knowledge about emotions meant nothing in the face of strong emotions though. Understanding the chemical base of an emotion doesn't mean the chemical is absent or that it won't act as per usual. Knowledge was just scant consolation. It's like the difference between being mauled in the dark by some unknown large animal and being mauled in broad daylight but knowing it's a tiger.

Here she was, armed with a full understanding of addiction to therapy, how it's common for a patient to get too attached to the therapist and vice-versa and still struggling to hold back her tears.

It felt like a massive weight was lifted off Shobha's shoulders when the session ended. She gasped, already thinking of her own therapist. She failed to give her favourite patient her customary, broad-smiled send-off. Maybe she could talk to her husband or her mother about how this was troubling her. Amma was old though and would probably be unable to follow the story. Her husband had enough on his plate with his work, this would probably sound trivial in narration. Most things sound trivial in narration except to the self. She sighed and hardly paid attention to her patients for the rest of the day.

When she got home from therapy that week, she felt listless. She'd had a massive row, wept, had a philosophical and ethical argument about therapy and man's purpose on earth as well as sulked and remained silent. All in one session, inside an hour.

She suddenly realised that she hadn't been feeling more desolate only in the last few weeks, that it had started months back. Her mind flashed back to an incident three months back that had had her feeling the same way; and then one more, a couple of weeks before that even. She was fried. She somehow just knew what she was going to do. She didn't know why but she was sure that she would, sure that the reason, whatever it was, was valid - it felt too strong not to be. She was immolated by self-doubt. The wall had been breached well before, she realised.

She knew it all about the mind and she was powerless and helpless. Overrun by the magnitude of every day. And she simply didn't know where it all stemmed from but she'd lost all the fight in her. That her patients looked to her when they felt the way she did now felt like life's last cruel joke. Her husband wouldn't be back for a few hours. He was in for a rude shock. She had to be quick lest she changed her mind. She would apologise of course. And wish her favourite patient a speedy return to normalcy along with a reference to another therapist. Maybe the therapist friend who'd deemed her weak and deemed Shobha similar to her patient. Let's see if he could resist her charms, fail to grow fond of her and keep it "professional"!

Why couldn't she care about the people her education had equipped her to "heal"? Why did she have to be held back by this cry for "professionalism", a code of honour that she had to follow? Why would caring cloud her judgement? How would one be committed to anything if one didn't care? If it was a chore, why do it? She could have taken a 9-5 job and done chores on computers. Why stop yourself from feeling human if you're working with humans? Humans who are emotionally investing in you? The emotional inhibition for the sake of keeping it professional was burning her from the inside. She would feel better soon.

The rope materialised seemingly out of nowhere. She didn't know how she managed to contort her legs to kick away her chair, but she did. She thought about her patient, then her husband. She could see a million dazzling lights. Before long, it went dark.