134 chapter
Biju, Kavitha and I returned to Beemapalli several times and conducted
follow-up interviews with informants we saw on the mosque grounds, but we
did not meet Hanifa and his wife again. It is possible we simply did not notice
them among the many people who circulate through the mosque every day. It
is my hope that Hanifa and his wife completed their fi ve months, got some
“change,” and returned home.
Features of everyday life, social practices and transnational infl uences in
Kerala arise in these conversations with people suff ering mental distress.
Educational achievement and marriage choice were signifi cant concerns for
virtually every person presented here. From Rajendran, we got a taste of how
people in Kerala discuss their educational qualifi cations and the exams they
passed or failed. Sreedevi’s mother, herself a school teacher, expressed her con-
cern about her daughter’s loss of interest in studies. Sreedevi also revealed,
along with Mary, concerns and anxieties about marriage prospects and the
nature of married life. Marriage concerns were encountered in Rajendran’s
story as well, especially in relation to the death of his father, the one person
who supported Rajendran and his wife in a marriage that was condemned by
other members of their families.
Th e trials and (mis)fortunes of Persian Gulf migration also aff ected the
economic and mental stability of several of these patients. Abdul-Rahman and
Hanifa associated the development of their mental distress with their experi-
ences in and early return from the Gulf. Lakshmi’s husband, meanwhile, has
been working in the Gulf for several years, and although she did not explicitly
connect her problems to this situation, the fact that she has to remain at home,
unemployed and unable to see her husband may well contribute to her mental
distress.
We also saw evidence of the dissemination of knowledge about health
and healing through the popular press in Kerala in the stories of these
individuals and their families. Sreedevi’s mother learned about ayurvedic
psych iatry through the newspaper, and Rajendran’s wife took her husband
to see a church minister-psychiatrist whom she read about in a popular
magazine. Allopathic psychiatric and psychological views are more often
represented in the media. Although as we know from the testimony of
Sreedevi’s mother and Rajendran’s wife that allopathic discourse about
mental health has not become hegemonic, we will see later how allopathic
idioms, such as the “tension” reported by Hanifa, are creating new hybrid
discourses of illness.
Th ese patient narratives also reveal some of the variety of Malayalam terms
used to describe what one accomplishes through therapy, including the forms
of the verb māruka (“to change”, mātti, māri, mārum), vyatyāsam (“diff erence”