146 chapter
Kavitha: What all did they do?Brother: Th ey tied a thread and did their ritual. Th ey did the rite in the Quran.
Still he didn’t get relief. So we saw another person who told us about the illness.
He said the treatment for this can only be done in a hospital, and he can’t do
any māntrika [magic] for this. Th is occurred through thoughts [chintāgathi]. Th is
began by thinking [chintichchu untāyatānu].Jayasree is a retired school teacher who was in inpatient care at an
allopathic psychiatric hospital for problems that included bouts of fear, sleep-
lessness, auditory hallucinations and a suicide attempt. In our conversation
with Jayasree and her daughter, who are Hindu, her daughter explained why
they were seeking treatment at a hospital rather than through mantravādam
(magic/countersorcery):
Kavitha: Do you have some belief in that [referring to the possibility of involving
magic or worship] relating to this problem?Daughter of Jayasree: Not for this problem. Th is is because of manas [the
mind].Here and in other excerpts that follow, patients or their caretakers use the
term manas, a Sanskrit-derived Malayalam word for mind that is also used
in Indian philosophical texts. Although “mind” is the commonplace, diction-
ary translation of manas, this term refers to a realm of attributes that are not
quite the same as those contained in the English “mind.” In philosophical trea-
tises, including the texts by Śankara discussed earlier and writings from the
Vaiśesika school of thought, manas is distinct from buddhi, which is rendered
as “intellect.” Cognition and thinking are capacities of manas, but intellect and
consciousness are not. Manas is a tool and more tangible, thereby further from
the transcendent, disembodied ātman (the self ) than the less tangible bōdham
and buddhi. One might say that features or capacities that are encompassed in
the English term “mind” are parsed into manas, buddhi and bōdham in India.
Occasionally, the distinction between mind and body is rendered in English
terminology inserted into Malayalam narratives. In his fi rst attempt to describe
his troubles, Mohan, a 20-year-old male inpatient at an allopathic psychiatric
hospital described his problem using the English term “mental” and explaining
that his problems relate to thinking:
I have a “mental” [i.e., a mental problem]. I will think something. When asking
someone something, I will feel diff erent things in my mind. [.. .]