Dilip.Chitre's profiletrajectoryPhotosBlogListsMore  |  Tools Help |
|
July 11 MEMOIRS : TO WRITE OR NOT TO WRITEI have just finished writing a narrative/non-narrative account of the mental agony I suffered since late last year and how it affected my interpersonal and social behaviour. One of the more obvious explanations for what triggered the manic-depressive or bipolar disorder was what psychiatric practitioners call 'postponed or unfinished mourning'. I lost my only child Ashay on November 29, 2003 to accidental asphxyiation from an unnoticed domestic fire. Ashay was alone in our flat in Pune and a slowly burning coir mattress had virtually filled our entire flat with thick smoke when neighbours broke the door to find him lying unconscious at his bedroom door. Viju and I were on a visit to Germany and Yohul was in Mumbai with his cousins. We received the news in Germany in the early hours of Saturday, November 23 but we could reach Pune only on Monday.
My narrative, which is as convoluted as such things tend to be, is called
standstill.
unfinished requiem for a lost son
I had not planned it as a book but it took on its own life and identity and formed a whole cluster of visual images, excerpts, poems, quotations, and so forth.
At the moment I am not very sure what I will do with it. It seems, even in its present shape, a unique work that I can share with a larger readership far beyond my kinship and friendship networks. It is the story of a father-son relationship ever since Ashay became one of the unsung victim-survivors of the industrial disaster in Bhopal on December 3-4, 1984. |
|
|
