00:00I'm just so delighted that Usha's Elephant has made it to the special freedom issue of Outlook.
00:23When I first met Usha, I was drawn to her because the large bindi
00:29and the way in which she smiled with her eyes.
00:33Being a warm person, she sort of, you know, held my hand and took me to her corner
00:40and in that corner, I saw this beautiful, beautiful elephant that she'd drawn with a crayon.
00:48And I was looking for metaphors and deeper meanings,
00:52but she just told me that, look, there's the elephant and there's Muruga.
00:56And from both, I derive a sense of love, a sense of hope.
01:00And my faith helps me move past and look beyond my sufferings
01:06and takes me from one day to another and helps me focus in the present.
01:11She'd actually made a pilgrimage all the way from Trichy to Dirichendu to find that peace and to centre herself.
01:17Second time I met her, she gave me some kheer and we exchanged our mental health journeys.
01:22And she told me, well, you know, faith, hope helps me.
01:25Medicines help me.
01:27And social connections help me.
01:29Feeling a sense of community where I am helps me.
01:33And to a certain extent, work helps me.
01:36And she would sell jasmine flowers at that point.
01:39She also did tell us that, well, while medicines do help her, stressors are often social
01:46and therefore the context matters.
01:48And she mentioned that her journey downhill began or rather was exacerbated with her father's passing on
01:58when she felt a sense of loneliness, alienation and abandonment.
02:02The third time I met her, we danced together and we had a jolly good time in a hostel.
02:08Now, if you look at Usha's life, there's a lot more to her.
02:11But moments of dance, moments of art, moments of free expression, moments of dialogue, dissent, debate.
02:18The journeys that she's gone through in life, at work, with people and in trains, moving from one destination to another.
02:33In all of this, I see the freedom that all of us so ardently value and pursue.
02:39So it's right and absolutely necessary that when we talk and think mental health or madness, that we focus on freedom in parallel.
02:51Freedom of all sorts, freedom to enter a treatment centre that all of us should have access to.
02:57Freedom to exit a treatment centre when you don't like it, as long as there is some form of safety that society can offer,
03:03which it should, which it doesn't currently.
03:06Freedom to make your own decisions and freedom to live life on your own terms, all of which Usha does.
03:13And therefore, her elephant, a symbol of faith, yes, but also a symbol of healing and a symbol of freedom on the cover,
03:23is, I think, the beginning of the art-proof movement in India or the outside art movement in India.
03:29And truly outside her art, it's not just Usha a person living with a mental health issue,
03:33but she also is part of the unrepresented segment of those that we refer to as people with lived experience,
03:42because she doesn't speak in English like I do, belongs to a disadvantaged segment of society,
03:51and has limited voice and experiences limited agency, which she, these are the shackles that she broke away from equally.
04:01So I congratulate Outlook and hope that we will all, with a sense of determination,
04:08aim to pursue this journey of contradictions, of suffering and of freedom, of hope and of oppression,
04:19and find some meaning collectively to challenge the situation of status quo,
04:25and to open our minds and vistas to hear those voices that aren't otherwise heard.
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