Disgraced probationary IAS officer Puja Khedkar was assessed for psychiatric illness under the Indian Disability Evaluation and Assessment Scale in January 2021 and certified to be depressed. Prior to this, the Ahmednagar district hospital had issued Khedkar a visual disability certificate in 2018. The authenticity of these certificates has been verified.
Undoubtedly, myopic degeneration in both eyes in one’s 20s would be enough to shatter anyone. It is worth noting though, this double whammy of vision impairment and a perturbed state of mind didn’t diminish Khedkar’s thirst for the superficial trappings of power, a laal batti on her car and a separate office — entitlements she didn’t qualify for.
Mental health professionals are always at pains to dispel the irritating myth about depressed people, that they’re hopelessly wallowing in self pity 24/7. We imagine despair to be a visible, angst-ridden state but dysfunction can hide in plain sight. There’s no specific way a sad person looks or behaves.
Depressed people are just people, both good and bad. It seems puzzling that you can claim to be choking on your own misery, yet soldier on with a routine — or if you’re Khedkar, ruthlessly grabbing every opportunity to seize whatever extra’s on offer.
One wonders that if she was depressed, then she should be on a suicide watch now; every rule she bent is being poured over in humiliating detail, making even the most jaded cynic sit up in alarm at her shameless quest to game the system.
Some decades later, when scholars are analysing the defining trends of the 21st century, the mainstreaming of mental illness and depression is likely to feature prominently. Unlike diabetes or heart disease that can be definitively tested, gauging the extent of depressive disorders is more challenging.
The inner workings of the brain remain a mystery that cannot be evaluated with 100% accuracy. Two psychiatrists may differ vastly on diagnosis for the same patient. This makes the scope for misuse huge when it comes to disability quotas, raising the logical question of whether it’s even fair to include mental disorders in governments’ affirmative actions.
Considering how many pressured IIT and UPSC aspirants are driven to suicide routinely, it’s hardly surprising that many feel compelled to succumb to fraud.
It is worth noting, the previous generation went to great lengths to conceal emotional troubles because even a hint of instability carried stigma. Nobody would hire you, forget finding a spouse. Now, we live in a culture that pathologises everything. People feel emboldened to wear PTSD, ADD and other labels on their sleeves because there’s no particular detrimental effect, and in some situations, great advantages.
It’s progress, certainly, that the aura of shame around normal frailties is diminishing. However, medicalising “feelings” has become so normal we forget, nine times out of ten, our wildly inconsistent emotions flare up or down, and come and go.
Rationally speaking, every human being will experience despair. Our lives are disrupted by tragic loss, illness and uncertainty; the news around us is full of sorrow. No thinking person can be ecstatically happy for long without descending into gloom, eventually.
Unceasing happiness is a laughable myth, perhaps the best that can be hoped for is Sigmund Freud’s humble goal, to transform a default setting of neurotic misery into common unhappiness. For the vast majority of us, melancholy is existential, something to be experienced and hopefully overcome but never cured.
To quote Hamlet, “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles?” Can’t fight the fact that both beautiful and terrible things will happen in this one life.
The writer is director, Hutkay Films
