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I don't know why depression is called blues. It has nothing to do with the blue color. It comes in all the rainbow colors.
Mine was blood-red.
It started with internally generated electric shocks whenever I was trying to fall asleep. I used to suddenly wake up with palpitations of the heart...I knew what shocks were since I was working in my M Sc with 500 Volts DC.
My Psychiatrist called the phenomenon 'arousal'. I knew a different and pleasanter sort of arousal. This was nothing of the kind. This refused to be followed eventually by derousal...no greater nuisance can be imagined. The episodes of these shocking arousal increased by leaps and bounds till I couldn't sleep at all. That was when my brain went haywire. Thoughts were racing through all its six lobes which are enumerated by Wiki cheerfully:
History records many feats of fasting for days and months. Gandhiji held the record for many years. His fasts were unlike mine...he didn't cheat. Nowadays Gandhiji's records have been torn into shreds.
Fasting is child's play compared to going for days together without sleep. Gandhiji would have given up in three days flat if he were prevented from falling asleep by waking him up whenever he dozed. Ask Guantanamo residents.
After a couple of weeks of sleeplessness the only meaningful thought was how to end it all.
During this period, as thoughts raced faster and faster, I turned more and more silent and withdrawn. The thoughts soon turned from rapidity to rabidity. Morbid is the word.
And I refused to pick up calls on my phone and asked my son or my wife to take them and transmit the gist to me. It was during this phase that I got a huge number of unsought advices, tips, taunts and twitters. All the callers were extra-kind and solicitous and avowedly helpful. They were not uneducated. They were IASes MDs, Ph Ds, Bankers, Managers, Yogic and Tantrik experts, Devotees, Knowalls and Browbeaters (wifebeaters?) among others.
The first advice I got was NOT to sleep during the day so that sleep would AUTOMATICALLY overtake me in the night....this belonged to the "Why don't they eat cake?" category.
The next was that I should buy a carrom-board and play with my wife so that my mind is diverted from whatever it was busy with, trying to focus on how to pocket that damn queen.
The next was a peremptory order to my wife to stop watching ETV soaps all the time and take me to the Ravindra Bharati auditorium day in and day out to listen to the ongoing classical music extravaganza.
And then walk me to the Tank Bund so my senses of sight and sound are soothed.
Forsooth!
I visited Ravindra Bharati yesterday to watch a children's Annual Day. The kids were lovely to watch but the seats were cramped, the loos were stinking, the entire edifice reeked of cries for maintenance.
And the Tank Bund was competing in its mal-odors with whatever rivers flow through the Hades...
More unwisdom tomorrow...
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I don't know why depression is called blues. It has nothing to do with the blue color. It comes in all the rainbow colors.
Mine was blood-red.
It started with internally generated electric shocks whenever I was trying to fall asleep. I used to suddenly wake up with palpitations of the heart...I knew what shocks were since I was working in my M Sc with 500 Volts DC.
My Psychiatrist called the phenomenon 'arousal'. I knew a different and pleasanter sort of arousal. This was nothing of the kind. This refused to be followed eventually by derousal...no greater nuisance can be imagined. The episodes of these shocking arousal increased by leaps and bounds till I couldn't sleep at all. That was when my brain went haywire. Thoughts were racing through all its six lobes which are enumerated by Wiki cheerfully:
- Frontal lobe—conscious thought; damage can result in mood changes, social differences, etc. The frontal lobes are the most uniquely human of all the brain structures.
- Parietal lobe—plays important roles in integrating sensory information from various senses, and in the manipulation of objects; portions of the parietal lobe are involved with visuospatial processing
- Occipital lobe—sense of sight; lesions can produce hallucinations
- Temporal lobe—senses of smell and sound, as well as processing of complex stimuli like faces and scenes.
- Limbic lobe—emotion, memory
- Insular cortex—pain, some other senses.
Fasting is child's play compared to going for days together without sleep. Gandhiji would have given up in three days flat if he were prevented from falling asleep by waking him up whenever he dozed. Ask Guantanamo residents.
After a couple of weeks of sleeplessness the only meaningful thought was how to end it all.
During this period, as thoughts raced faster and faster, I turned more and more silent and withdrawn. The thoughts soon turned from rapidity to rabidity. Morbid is the word.
And I refused to pick up calls on my phone and asked my son or my wife to take them and transmit the gist to me. It was during this phase that I got a huge number of unsought advices, tips, taunts and twitters. All the callers were extra-kind and solicitous and avowedly helpful. They were not uneducated. They were IASes MDs, Ph Ds, Bankers, Managers, Yogic and Tantrik experts, Devotees, Knowalls and Browbeaters (wifebeaters?) among others.
The first advice I got was NOT to sleep during the day so that sleep would AUTOMATICALLY overtake me in the night....this belonged to the "Why don't they eat cake?" category.
The next was that I should buy a carrom-board and play with my wife so that my mind is diverted from whatever it was busy with, trying to focus on how to pocket that damn queen.
The next was a peremptory order to my wife to stop watching ETV soaps all the time and take me to the Ravindra Bharati auditorium day in and day out to listen to the ongoing classical music extravaganza.
And then walk me to the Tank Bund so my senses of sight and sound are soothed.
Forsooth!
I visited Ravindra Bharati yesterday to watch a children's Annual Day. The kids were lovely to watch but the seats were cramped, the loos were stinking, the entire edifice reeked of cries for maintenance.
And the Tank Bund was competing in its mal-odors with whatever rivers flow through the Hades...
Wiki:
There were five main rivers that appear both in the real world and
the underworld. Their names were meant to reflect the emotions
associated with death.[5]
- The Styx is generally considered to be one of the most prominent and central rivers of the Underworld and is also the most widely known out of all the rivers. It is known as the river of hatred and is named after the goddess Styx. It is said that this river circles the underworld seven times.[6]
- The Acheron is the river of pain. According to Euripides, it is the river that Charon, also known as the Ferryman, rows the dead in the ferry across to enter Hades.[7]
- The Lethe is the river of oblivion. It is associated with the goddess Lethe, or the goddess of forgetfulness and oblivion.[8]
- The Phlegethon is the river of fire. According to Plato, this river led to the depths of Tartarus.
- The Cocytus is the river of wailing.
More unwisdom tomorrow...
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