The Body Myth

by Rheea Mukherjee

  By the third meeting with Appa, his obsession with genocide had turned personal: “In my day, we didn’t have the internet, but we could locate Poland, Chicago, and Laos on a map, and we could tell you about the pros and cons of Kennedy, even Eisenhower. Mind you, Mira, that’s besides all the things we knew about our own country.”

  I had nodded my head in support. Had it been last year, I would have felt the same level of rage Appa had for the uninformed world. But now, I could only pretend to feel the same way. Appa went on relentlessly. “But no, now this generation of kids you teach, they are going the zombie American way, little bubbles where they can’t make any kind of historical connections. Fascism and Big Brother will smack them on their heads, and they won’t know what hit them. In fact, they’ll go running into its attractive, commercial arms.”

  He wasn’t getting the same conviction from me. I wasn’t the girl he had grown to admire. The girl who read, the girl who knew it all. The girl who could dissect the world and its injustices. It must have punched him in the gut, my stoic response. My utter lack of passion.

  I considered being swayed by Appa’s current bag of apples, to go full force in the classroom with the unknown horrors Indonesia had suffered. Maybe Samina’s class would enjoy it; they by far had the best disposition to withstand old-school intellectual banter. I felt tired at the very thought of having to tell a class of students about genocide in Indonesia. Nothing close to it was in their textbooks, except for the Cold War. I said as much to Appa.

  “What more do you want to connect it to? Tie it in with the stupid Cold War, that is the perfect segue. That’s how you make them think.”

  I nodded. But I shouldn’t have, because it only encouraged him to start talking about Bangladesh. How our textbooks didn’t cover the 1971 genocide nearly enough, even though it was Indian history. By that point, I realized Appa and I were having separate conversations. My responses were only further burying the genocides, injustices, and victories that Appa was harping on. The world started to spin on the axis of everything unknown, a helpless drowning that made me want to go to class the next day and teach something mind-numbingly safe, like Gulliver’s Travels.

  Occasionally, I tried thinking about Samina. The idea of her always allowed me to flicker with purpose. I could be that special mentor in that gifted child’s life. But this time no flicker of purpose kicked in my gut. Something achingly juvenile was happening to me—Appa’s need to confront the world at large only defined my own problems with distinct clarity. I had no room in my heart for the hurt and injustice the world had felt. Appa was pushing me more toward the need to meddle with Sara and Rahil in some form. Stalking them on social media was no good. Sara didn’t use it and Rahil’s was a corpse feed, a rolling scroll of never-ending happy birthdays from previous years.

  It was a Saturday and I had hours and hours in front of me. They hung limply from my ceiling, challenging me to get out of bed. Appa had called, but I had made up a school meeting. I considered watching YouTube videos, but the thought made my body ache with boredom. I longed for the hum of Sara’s music, the sway of her body and mine. But when I shut my eyes there was only rage.

  The mind can get on the highway to depression in a series of clinically predictable steps. First it is lured by the safe neatness that comes with not engaging with the everyday. Then boredom starts to crawl at the edges of the neck into the ears. Poke, tickle, flap. Then there’s the hum of nothing, the hum of everything. That’s precisely when the mind deep dives to the place where static sadness and a heavy chest are a permanent reality. I had to act fast.

  I can’t remember how I got there, no matter how hard I try. Why bother, though? It’s inconsequential to what I ended up doing. All I remember is that I found myself at the steps of the hospital again. The swish of the automatic doors pushed away the thick humidity of the city. In the middle of the hospital’s marbled floor was a giant Ganesha idol decked with layers of jasmine and marigold garlands.

  Sara’s words from months ago came to me: It doesn’t matter what symbol of hope you take, all that matters is what you believe.

  How many pujas had my mother offered to Ganesha, asking him to remove her crushing sense of numbness? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was what I believed. Ganesha, the destroyer of obstacles, his trunk confidently snaking down his chest all the way to his full tummy. Here he was, gold-plated with the excesses of corporate hospital income. There were a few people standing around the statue, their hands in devoted prayer. I felt shame tickle my throat as I imagined their sick family members, currently admitted in this very hospital. And here I was praying for my love story to be less complicated. But the shame didn’t last in my body, and I had to stop myself from lecturing the older lady wearing a south silk sari that no prayer could stop the body from dying if it needed to. Instead I walked toward the help desk and asked a uniformed woman how I could make an appointment with Dr. Mudra.

  “You should have made an appointment, he is very busy. You can do a walk-in, but you’ll have to wait. No guarantees. Third floor, walk past general surgery and orthopedics.”

  I waited after informing the desk nurse that I was a “walk-in.” She looked at me and frowned, scribbling something onto her clipboard while sticking out her left hand, signaling me to sit down. The air-conditioning was far too cold, and goose bumps sprung all over my arms as I held myself tightly, legs swinging back and forth. At least I looked like a wreck—maybe I would get in after all. There seemed to be four patients ahead of me and all of them had a friend or a spouse with them. One woman had her head on her husband’s shoulder. He looked dully into his cell phone. His work badge was cradled in bunches of fabric that had collected near his stomach. I wondered why a man like that had bought and worn a formal shirt that was at least two sizes too big. I knew that I was wondering about it only because I didn’t want to acknowledge the truth. What I wanted was the shoulder of someone as regular as that guy. Even if he was some boring cell-phone-addicted man who couldn’t get his shirt size right.

  The thick wooden door opened and a patient walked out. As the door started to close by itself, I saw Dr. Mudra sitting behind his pristine white desk. His eyes focused on me. The nurse was motioning to the oversized shirt guy to take his wife in next. But the nurse’s phone rang, and then she looked over to me, her face disapproving.

  “After this couple you can go next.”

  He had seen me. He wanted to talk to me. I was going to get the information I wanted. I chanted this to myself for twenty minutes. Finally, the nurse snapped her fingers and waved to me to go inside. I rubbed my arms, trying to will the goose bumps away.

  Dr. Mudra was trying hard to look serious. It was the way his mouth twitched. I remembered it being kinder looking when I had met him in the cafeteria. Today he wore a somber maroon shirt buttoned all the way to the top.

  “You are Sara’s friend, aren’t you?”

  I nodded and took a seat right opposite him. His face lit up in a smile for the first time. “Well, the patient chair is right here.” He pointed to the chair closer to him.

  “I won’t take much of your time—I’m just trying to get some answers.” My own confidence and clear articulation almost threw me off track, but I pressed on. “Supposing I wanted to, uh, help myself, and I was aware of certain things that I am doing—would you be able to give me an educated guess on your thoughts?”

  “Why do I get the impression you are looking for a psych evaluation? You know well I am a neurologist.”

  “Please, Dr. Mudra.”

  His eyes softened. He took off his brown glasses and cupped his chin in his palms. He had surrendered to me, I could feel it.

  “I am just looking to see what I could have—you know, if I feel sick all the time, and, you know, if I’ve even somehow managed to bring on seizures, even though all my tests are normal, would you call me a hypochondriac? What would you call me?”

  Dr. Mudra inhaled deeply. I could feel his professional resistance. I
could also feel his need to spill the beans.

  “Well, I don’t think stringent labels help anyone,” he said finally. Disappointment began to pool in my gut. He cleared his throat. “But the mind is a powerful thing. Are you honestly trying to help—” He paused and sniffed. “Help yourself?”

  I nodded vigorously.

  “The mind is a powerful thing, sometimes I think we haven’t even begun to understand its powers.”

  I bit my lip. I had him on my leash, but he was tugging me the other way. He was sounding more like Sara. “I know that, but in our capacity as it stands, what do you think I should look into?”

  He studied me for one long, hard moment. I sat frozen, waiting for the payoff.

  “I think you should look into something called Munchausen syndrome. And a person taking care of such a person, well, they don’t know what to do anymore apart from accepting it.”

  I repeated the words back to him, begging him with my tone to tell me more.

  “And really, that’s all I can say. You’ve cut other patients’ place in line, so I’d appreciate it if you would get going and get yourself to a doctor who works with the mind for a living.”

  This was as good as it was going to get. I leaped out of my seat and took one last look at him. His eyes were sad.

  XVI

  I chanted “Munchausen syndrome” the entire way back in the auto-rickshaw. I held off searching for the term on my phone, wanting to be fully in control, on my computer. The term felt familiar. Had Oprah said something about it? Had I read something about it?

  I read every medical definition first. I nourished every new link and click with sips of chamomile. I could feel Sara in me, I could feel her breath grazing the back of my shoulder. I could feel her sense of betrayal as I read more and more, my eyes squinting into the glow of my computer screen.

  Munchausen was rarely diagnosed in India. The internet defined it to me over and over again: a need to be surrounded by all things medical and an obsession over failing health. For someone with Munchausen—otherwise known as factitious disorder—doctors, medical tests, and subsequent attention are akin to that of a loving parent. Think of a child needing this loving parent all the time, but the child is always ignored because, well, the child is healthy. But this child must be with its damn parent somehow, so the mind and body find a way. The mind convinces itself of the body’s failing. The body, burdened by the mind, is ultimately weakened and submits.

  I read about borderline personality, something that seemed to merge with Munchausen. I ticked the symptoms I thought Sara had: chronic feelings of emptiness, paranoia, fear of abandonment, impulsive anger. It occurred to me I had them all too. Goddamn labels. As far as I could tell, everyone was a fucking borderline personality.

  Camus’s The Stranger stared at me from my wooden coffee table. The book lay on the table so calmly, it talked to me. Mira, here lies your past life, you’ve forgotten what it means to be you. I felt no regret. Once again, I went to Google. Before, books had created an intellectual barrier. I had taught myself not to succumb to the hyperbole of Western science and labeling, the instant gratification of having all the answers at one’s fingertips. But now it was all I had.

  It wasn’t enough to understand Sara, far from it. The bullet point symptoms did not cover her laugh, her attachment to the soul, her disdain for reality, her musky rose scent, her contemplative chamomile sips. I read an article about a child whose mother suffered from Munchausen by proxy, dragging her child to doctors and watching as her child was subjected to three unnecessary surgeries. The mother, the author deduced in retrospect, found her safety in doctors, a safety she had missed as a child when her own father had died. It didn’t add up, not in Sara’s case. Plus, Sara was so self-aware, so blatant about the mind and so sure of her soul. Yes, Sara had protective parents, but all her symptoms didn’t tie up well to this narrative. No, her DNA was knitting her consciousness in a new direction, one that had to destroy itself first before it could rise. I was sure of it. The only thing I was sure of.

  Rahil wasn’t making her sick. He was just complicit in it. He deserved his own term. Munchausen by complacency. Munchausen by the exotic thrill that comes with caring for such beautiful destruction.

  On the second night of research, I discovered a forum where Munchausen sufferers spilled their darkest feelings. I added myself as a user and spent the entire night on the forum, scrolling by every comment, excited that I had so much content to stay with me for the night. The users were primarily from America:

  I am thirty-seven years old, been suffering from factitious disorder for the last decade. At my worst I was injecting insulin from my dad’s supply so that my blood sugar levels were low in tests. I never got treated, diagnosed myself.

  No one really suspects anything. I spend most of my time reading medical journals. I am studying to become a certified nursing assistant. I guess working in that environment might help me from just being the patient? Don’t laugh, please.

  I cut my thumb at an urgent care and put it in my urine cup so I could show my doctor I had blood in my urine. They are treating me for a UTI now, but they sent me home. I don’t know what to do most days.

  They think it’s stress. And it is stress! Stress that I want the doctor to think there is something really, really physically wrong. Stress that I want him to do something serious about it. But when they diagnose “stress,” they just ask me to do breathing exercises, and I get nothing. I walk out empty-handed. So frustrating. And alone. Anyone else feeling me?

  I am older than you, but high school was a disaster. I had my tonsils out because I basically demanded the doctor take them out of me. Hang in there.

  When you’re ready, go to therapy, get help. Admitting the problem is embarrassing. But it’s not worth it to live like that. I am not 100 percent yet myself, maybe I’ll never be, but I am better now.

  All the comments essentially same. Then I stopped. It was very late at this point, nearing dawn.

  Yello1996: Anyone ever fake a seizure?

  @ yello1996: Totally! It used to be my go-to illness before I got myself some help (okay, well, before I finally got caught by one of my doctors). I used to fake them in high school and even in college. I’d even wet myself for authenticity. It got me a ton of hospital visits and a bunch of attention from my family and friends. But I wasn’t smart enough to demonstrate the aftereffects of it: confusion, disorientation, lethargy. I was too high off adrenaline with the attention. One doctor caught on years later, though, asked me a bunch of personal questions. I was diagnosed with BPD and then factitious disorder. My family are naturally attention-giving when something is wrong, so even this diagnosis got them worried and I was happy, I mean whatever gives me that high. But then I had to do the work and try to get better. It’s like being a chain-smoker who has to quit. You can quit, but you’ll always want one. I feel you, but resist, you could get yourself killed with unnecessary meds.

  There is something reassuring about the clipped but friendly confessions of Americans online, a quality I suspect the rest of the world admires as well. It’s the blunt ability to share their most private vulnerabilities, while dutifully sticking to categories and the confines of defined symptoms. There is something deeply myopic about it too.

  Yet here they were, sprawling clinical testimonials that matched Sara’s behaviors. There was every logical reason to apply these testimonials to Sara’s life and diagnose her unquestionably. But I could see Sara rolling her eyes and only making me feel stupid. I could see Sara looking at me and shaking her head for believing in medical labels.

  But then I remembered how Sara acted after we had run toward her in the park. How she’d stopped shaking and sat up. She was weak for a few minutes, but her eyes, they were bright. Come to think of it, Sara’s eyes always seemed bright. Even when she complained of dulling cramps and aching knees. And then there was her ability to talk to me in detail about her day even though she claimed she had a pounding headache. The firs
t day I had met her, I was for all practical purposes a new person who had seen her being ill. A new person to perform for. Rahil was happy too, more so than his usual temperament, as I’ve come to know it. It was almost like he was feeding off her adrenaline rush too.

  They’re both sick little insects, I thought. Heartbreak comes in waves, and now it had flooded my entire body. I turned on a Turkish Sufi song on YouTube and I found myself headed toward my bedroom. I sat on the corner of my mattress and pretended Sara was next to me, that we were swaying together. But when I closed my eyes I saw Ketan. He was smiling, yellow shirt, khaki pants.

  You got so much more to do, Mir-Mir.

  It sounded so real, my eyes blinked open. I felt terror at first, and then I just felt lonely.

  XVII

  I resurrected two more people from my past. The first was Shomon, a Bengali classmate I had gone to school with until twelfth grade. The second was Asha, a colleague I used to work with when I was in communications. She had worked under Ketan and used to be the single girl who went to all the parties. Now her social media told another story. Just like Shriya, she too had a young toddler and was living the Indian urban mommy-hood dream. Shomon, however, was clearly single.

  I met Shomon on a Saturday. He had recently divorced; his wife had wanted to live in Kolkata, where her family was. But career opportunities had brought him to Suryam.

  “It’s the new Indian divorce, we don’t understand compromise,” he said, sipping a cappuccino, the froth bubbling on his mustache.

  His very presence irritated me from the start. I couldn’t really justify my annoyance, so I flip-flopped between aggressive, challenging comments and sickly-sweet encouraging phrases that only served to confuse the poor man.