Often, we see women with such superstitious inclinations are termed as witches while on the other hand men are given the sense of authority and are blindly believed on. This also highlights how superstitions concerning men and women are treated differently. How even educated people of the family agreed to the superstition aspect rather than the mental illness, raises major questions about the stigma around mental health in our society. Did the women of the house have the right to not participate in that ritual? And if they didn’t can it still be called suicide? Or should it be called murder?” Can we really call the Burari case a mass suicide? Or is it a mass murder?” It’s important to talk about gender roles & mental health in Indian households!Īlso, the fact that no one talked about Lalit’s illness showed how in our society mental illness comes with an added amount of shame and denial. We see in one of the diary entries how Lalit ensured that his wife remains subjugated in both a literal and metaphorical sense.Īt one point we see journalist Barkha Dutt say, “To me what this raised was a question of power. This shows how often in Indian household women have zero agency to question the patriarch. Also, the point to add here is that many women in the family from the third generation were highly educated and yet they believed in whatever Lalit said. We see the neighbours and other relatives pointing out ‘the family looked so happy and normal’. We also get to see how no one shared anything about this with anyone. ‘Did the women of the house have the right to not participate in that ritual?’ The sense of authority was clear through this. The diary had proper details on what everyone needs to do and how they need to live their life. All members of the family believed in Lalit and did all sorts of superstitious things that he used to say. They were manipulated to believe that if they don’t do whatever Lalit is saying then something bad will happen to the family. The reason behind this was that they believed all of this was coming from the head patriarch, the grandfather. The hair-raising details mentioned in the diary shows how the family used to blindly follow whatever Lalit used to say. We see how Lalit’s psychosis soon became a shared psychosis of the family. The void of authority that the grandfather had left was filled by Lalit. Through the diary entries, it is revealed that Lalit used to hear his father’s voice and command his family what to do. This also shows how normal it is for women in usual Indian households to have zero agency to voice out their opinion or will.įurther, we see in the documentary, Lalit Bhatia the youngest son of the grandfather who allegedly had an undiagnosed mental illness fills the void of that patriarch in the family. The documentary highlights the gender roles where a male head of an average Indian family holds importance. Lalit would ‘hear’ his dead father’s voice & command the family! His father has never said no but he does hold the veto power. He talks about how even today his wife cannot go out without the consent of his father. He comments that in an Indian family like his family, the oldest male member of the house, holds veto power and authority. Never miss real stories from India's women.
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