The Illusion of Good Mental Health in the Motherland

It’s ironic that while mental health is such a controversial topic in my South Asian household, the most mentally at ease I feel is when I go back to spend time at my family home in Hyderabad, India. My mother flinches at the thought of me exploring getting on anxiety medication and reinforces often that therapy is a waste of my time. But when I’m in Hyderabad, the place I was born and funnily enough the apex point of the family history where most of my turmoil comes from, I somehow feel the most equipped to quell my anxiety and deal with intrusive thoughts. 

There is an obvious reason for this. When I’m at this home, I’m choosing to spend intentional time with my grandparents without distractions, which forces me to rein in my usual pace of life and slow down significantly. My days usually start with sharing a cup of shunti chai with my grandfather on the couch while he reads the headlines in The Deccan Chronicle and I browse the more delicious Tollywood gossip section. I then join both my grandparents for lunch at 11 a.m. (that’s right, 11 and sometimes even 10:30 if they’re breaking a religiously observed fast from the previous day). We disperse for a mandated nap after only to wake up to afternoon chai and a trip to the market with my grandmother. Sometimes we’ll throw in a walk to the temple as an added adventure or stop by a sugarcane juice stand as a treat (my grandmother is very particular about eating anything that’s not homemade). But usually, we’re back for evening prayers (yes, you read that right, I enter my spiritual and pious era everytime I’m back) and begin dinner prep soon after. Dinner is consumed against the backdrop of whichever Kannada show is my grandparents’ latest obsession and then it’s off to bed. Sometimes I’ll break the rules and read on the swing or watch an extra hour of TV of my choosing, but it’s usually lights out by 9 pm only to do it all over again the next day. 

I get a lot of joy from existing in those four walls, doing those (more or less) four things every day with two people I love very much. It’s a radically different lifestyle than the one I live in Brooklyn. There I wake up in a frenzy every morning, already overwhelmed by the opportunities the day presents. The routine is chaos. As someone who’s juggling multiple passions and has a compulsive need to excel in all of them, everyday feels like a tug of war between “there aren’t enough hours in the day” and “good things take time to cultivate.” I do four different things a day, and that’s being conservative. It feels physically impossible to maintain the same pace I do in Hyderabad in Brooklyn – there are too many stimuli, too much pressure, too much fear of missing out and no one to make me shunti chai at my request. So obviously my anxieties are heightened. Dread creeps in in unhealthy amounts. There doesn’t even seem to be time to sit with these thoughts, let alone sort through them and come out stronger on the other end. 

I realize that I purposely take time off from my real life to spend time in Hyderabad, but even vacation is usually filled with an agenda for me. Hyderabad is the only place I find myself collecting small joys and being content with it. It’s easy to people-watch on the terrace with no concept of time or re-read all my Amar Chitra Katha comics like it’s the first time or romanticize the black and white photo albums gathering dust in our storage rooms when I’ve intentionally paused all responsibility. 

Finding Hyderabad to be my haven from mental health concerns is such a diasporic view of the experience. No one my age, with a similar socioeconomic background and life aspirations in Hyderabad is spending hours drinking chai and taking afternoon naps and soaking up the sunset on the roof like I am during my visits. It’s a privileged thing to say my mental health is at its best in a city that’s as forthcoming with opportunity as it is in heating up the competition to take advantage of those opportunities. Maybe I avoid The Deccan Chronicle headlines about cutthroat college admissions processes, farming subsidies being cut, women feeling unsafe on public transit, and extreme temperatures making it hard for people to survive, let alone address their mental health, on purpose. It prolongs the illusion of a safe haven. And I don’t fully feel like I’m on vacation because of how easily I slip into this lifestyle – it creeps into my bones the minute I put my suitcases down in front of the gate. It feels too much like home. But, there’s a palpable awareness every moment I’m there of how this life will never translate to my existence in Brooklyn. There, I actively consume and internalize troublesome headlines, chase my dreams while being crushed under the weight of imposter syndrome, and make it all look easy just like everyone else is.

The case for Hyderabad being my mental health retreat is strong but jaded. I know I’d have the same storm brewing in my head if I was trying to make it on the streets of Chappal Bazar like I am in the streets of Brooklyn. But there’s hope yet to bring pieces of my life in Hyderabad to ground me and foster a habit of slowing down for my own good. Maybe I can learn to make shunti chai, wake up an hour earlier and sip it on my balcony which my roommate has graciously adorned with flowering plants for the summer. Maybe I can build a farmers market routine into the weekend and shop for produce for that night’s dinner like I do with my grandmother. Maybe I can force myself to watch TV aimlessly to rest my brain without constantly feeling guilty about all the other ways I could be using that time. And maybe, mental health can be more consistently addressed everyday rather than become a project to be tackled every December when I visit Hyderabad.