Though such a person is to be taken care of and treated, what happens when one hears about supposedly ‘normal’ folk behaving out of sheer paranoia? What happens when certain delusional pearls spouted by such men and women are granted space in newspapers and at times even provided primetime slots on TV? It is only logical to conclude that in any society where this is happening on a regular basis, there is something inherently and seriously wrong.
The whole idea of mad men/women being given a chance to be heard, vent out and even preach their psycho-babblings goes beyond being just a figurative take on an issue; it becomes a make-believe world. A scenario like this reminds one of the 1976 film, Network, in which Peter Finch plays a clinically depressed news anchor on a TV channel, who has a mental breakdown live in front of the camera. His incoherent rants about politics and society become a hit with viewers frustrated by the breakdown of law and order and the economy in the United States during mid-1970s.
As his mental condition worsens, the ratings of his show rise and his employers continue to encourage his madness — until he finally suffers a blackout in front of the camera. Soon his show begins to lose ratings and he is gradually shipped out. Though still as clinically depressed and manic as ever, he finds himself without the adulation-grabbing platform to air his frenzied rants, and ends up committing suicide.
By now we are well aware of the usual spectre of many ‘analysts’ and preachers blasting out their twisted jabbering from our TV screens. Of course this can be dismissed as a contemptuous act by the channels to score high ratings by allowing certain personified hyperboles to give vent to a thoroughly depressed society that they see fragmenting under the stress of terrorism and economic downturns. However, such a cynical dismissal in this regard should turn into a grave concern when some of these highly animated characters go on to encourage actual acts of hate.
Apart from constantly delivering warped lectures pitched against civilian rule, some preachers and so-called analysts have also been known to have used a highly myopic understanding of the faith and an almost-xenophobic, nationalist narrative to trigger hate crimes. The question arises, when Pakistanis see such crackpots given coverage in the mainstream media, wouldn’t they, instead of suspecting these characters’ clearly questionable sanity, take such madness to be something normal?
No wonder one continues to hear about the many atrocities that are so casually committed in the name of religion and patriotism. But the funny thing is, though it is clear that most of these people seem to be suffering from mental disturbance, they present themselves (and are treated), as perfectly normal folk. For instance, so often we hear about men filing cases against TV commercials, claiming that these commercials had mocked religion. Such cases should be thrown out by the court and the petitioner declared mentally suspect, but that does not happen.
Imagine a man sitting in front of a TV set watching perfectly harmless TV commercials. He then somehow manages to ‘see’ the hidden and coded ways a commercial uses to mock the guy’s beliefs. Being obviously unsound of mind, such an unfortunate man in this country is more likely to march to a court or get his concern heard in the mainstream media than be strapped and marched to a psychiatric institution.
Why should he ever suspect his own irrational reasoning when society, and its courts and media, are treating him like a ‘true Muslim’ or a passionate patriot? There is no doubt about the clinical madness that makes some people murder hoards of men, women and children in the name of faith, but there are many levels of this kind of psychosis. The most intense levels either land one in a mental ward, all chained, or turn one into a murderer of innocent people, believing he or she is being ordained to do so by God.
The scary bit is that one feels this same nature of madness drives a lot of very normal looking Pakistanis as well. The only difference is that the levels of this madness are comparatively lower. But is that a respite? Not really. Because when, say, a community in Pindi actually gets the body of a nine-year-old Hindu girl exhumed from a Muslim graveyard claiming it was making the yard ‘impure,’ is this not an act of chronic neurosis?
So why aren’t we labelling it as such? Reading about it in the newspaper, I thought, those who got the girl’s body exhumed might have deluded themselves into believing that they had purified their dead with this act; but if the dead could speak, I’m sure, in this case, they’d most likely be weeping.
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